The Youth Environmental Press Team - Center for Emerging Media Design and Development

Overview

The Youth Environmental Press Team (YEPT) is a group of Indiana high school students that share a passion for environmental journalism. YEPT collects stories from schools across the state, some of which are published on the Indiana Environmental Reporter website, which gives its members statewide exposure for their work, while building a stronger community.

The project team conducted multiple design thinking sessions with YEPT members, designed a website and performed UX testing, and created a style guide and social media campaign to help the organization form a cohesive identity online. We also tested multiple logos, colors, and fonts to give YEPT its own brand apart from Indiana Earth Charter that will help in their pursuit of growing the organization past state borders.

We also took the things we have learned as a cohort and share these tools with high school students at earlier stages in their careers, with hopes they will continue to develop professionally. We also had the amazing opportunity to speak with Michael Kodas, a Senior Editor at InsideClimate News and link YEPT with BSU Journalism Workshops which we hope will be a long-term partnership that both the Workshop and Youth Environmental Press Team can continue to build on for years to come.

Our Purpose

The Youth Environmental Press Team is looking for the opportunity to grow its team, measure audience engagement, and collaborate effectively while amplifying young journalists’ voices in the call for climate action. The purpose of this project is to help refine YEPT’s organizational structure and processes so that the members can grow their teams, reach a wider audience, and increase attendance and participation among existing team members. In addition to providing YEPT with the tools and structure to achieve its organizational goals, we also hope to provide members with a meaningful experience that not only expands their skillset, but makes them more marketable. This will be achieved by creating a style guide, website, and workshop for YEPT.

Our Project

The partnership with YEPT was a multi-pillar project that incorporated design thinking, UX testing and website design to provide its members with a website, style guide, and recruitment opportunity to refine their organization and provide value to its current and potential members.

Website. At the beginning of the project, YEPT’s online presence was a subcategory of Indiana Earth Charter. The purpose of providing YEPT with its own website is to build a stronger brand identity and ownership of its own publishing site. The low-fidelity prototype was a wireframe and then iterated to an interactive wireframe using figma. After a round of UX-testing, the website was transitioned to SquareSpace with the domain name https://www.youthenvironmentalpressteam.org/.

Style Guide. The style guide includes YEPT’s mission, team roles, design standards, and social media guidelines. It is intended to guide YEPT through the processes of the organization, and serves as a tool to help members deliver consistent content and messaging to their target audience. Multiple design thinking sessions were conducted to develop the style guide and a survey was conducted to finalize the mission statement and logo. The final version, including social media components, are in the YEPT drive.

Workshop. The project team is partnering with BSU Journalism workshops to host one 90-minute session and two 60-minute “opt-in” sessions to be held between June 13th and 17th. Guest speakers include Michael Kodas, Senior Editor at InsideClimate News, and Dr. Kevin Moloney, Center for EMDD assistant professor and seasoned photojournalist. The sessions will be developed by the speakers. The goals of the workshop are to provide a learning and networking opportunity for YEPT, and increase awareness among high school journalism students in hopes of recruiting new members.

Results

Ball State University Department of Journalism’s Summer 2022 Workshop is expected to return to on-campus/residential this year, after having been moved to an online program the last two years. In 2020, more than 1,000 students and teachers registered for the workshop. We are hoping to increase awareness of YEPT among this year’s attendees.