1.Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?

• My fluency in Spanish and my Colombian heritage can allow me to effectively communicate with the Latino community and empathize with their cultural barriers. 
• My background in analyzing and processing data in the classroom setting could help in the field and will help corroborate the research goals. 
• Knowledge of the Lehigh Valley area having lived here can provide us with background information that can help us understand the population and the extent of what we are trying to do. 
• Background knowledge about the Lehigh Valley and interest and slight expertise in public health can allow me to maneuver my way around the area and the topics we will be addressing in this project. 
• Interest in the broad applications of social science 
• Experience living within communities similar to those we are trying to help
• Background in organizing events/ interacting directly with those in communities 
• Helena – A design process that is both uniquely mine and effective would incorporate my experience drafting/writing policy memos. Due to my experience, I believe that policy memos are a great form of analysis and recommendation. I believe my experience would make designing one easier and more effective. Being fluent in Spanish will allow me to communicate with the Hispanic population in the Lehigh Valley, which is a community of color. I believe that this skill would make our interviews more effective and meaningful for me. My experience with an interest in community service is an important aspect of my life. Serving the community through the design process would make it unique to my interests. I believe that this experience and interest would help me approach the community with respect and maintain relationships and partnerships. 

Our unique design process would build off of all of the aforementioned skills and experiences, centered primarily around making strong connections with community members and healthcare workers in the Lehigh Valley to gain insight into the major issues that communities of color are facing during the pandemic. We believe it is important that throughout this project, we establish clear and consistent communication with the communities that we would like to work with in order to design the appropriate policy solutions. This is also crucial to better understand the different cultural norms that we must work with.

2.Identify your three most important stakeholders and list five UNIQUE attributes for each one of them

1. Lehigh Valley Residents
   1. Knowledge of the area
   2. Personal experience with COVID-19 
   3. Have opinions on how the local government and Lehigh Valley health networks have handled COVID-19
   4. Low-income people of color (ie. African American, Hispanic, etc.)
   5. Essential workers/work in industries most impacted by COVID-19
2. Lehigh Valley Health Care Personnel
   1. Experienced the hectic environment of the pandemic 
   2. Knowledge of medicine and healthcare system to contribute to our project
   3. Can tell us how they feel different races were impacted by the virus
   4. Talk about what the national government and the local government did to help 
   5. Give data on COVID cases and vaccinations specifically within the Lehigh Valley
3. Lehigh valley political figures
   1. May be addressing the same issues we are looking at/ interested in addressing healthcare disparities in the Lehigh Valley through their position
   2. Have experience with policymaking to assist us in designing appropriate policy solutions for our project.
   3. Have greater authority/influence within the area
   4. Have connections. Can connect us to the people we need for certain topics we are looking at/to obtain certain types of information
   5. Have a platform. Can help us spread our message with their platform

3. Identify three ways in which you will validate your project concept, technology, usability, and business model.

1. Research, numerical and nominal data to statistically support the needs that we are addressing.
2. Policymakers finding credence in our policy memorandums 
3. Talk to professors and health care workers and use their input/knowledge about the issues that we are trying to address in our project concept/design process.
4. Feedback from the community to make sure that they understand our mission and we understand their needs.

4. Give three examples of something very interesting you learned from a friend that was a completely alien concept to you.

• My friend is teaching me Shona, his native language. Shona is a very beautiful Bantu language that is spoken in Zimbabwe. It is difficult to learn, but I find learning languages fascinating and fun.
• My friend, who lives in Russia, informed me about the Russian education system, which I did not know anything about. I was surprised to hear that Russia has a literacy rate of 98%, which is higher than most Western European countries. Classes last about 40 minutes with 15 minute break in between and most of higher education tuition is paid for by the government.
• My friend explained to me the concept of thermodynamics, which is the physics of heat and energy transfer. Thermodynamics is how air conditioning and central heating was created. I don’t study physics or engineering, so it was very interesting to learn how physics is useful or seen in my everyday life.