High school project idea · Design & Creative Arts
Find the user excluded by an everyday design and make their experience impossible to ignore.
Use respectful research to redesign one product, service, or communication for people whose needs are often treated as edge cases.
Why this project matters
Use respectful research to redesign one product, service, or communication for people whose needs are often treated as edge cases. This project feels different from a school assignment because the student serves a specific underserved or overlooked user group, creates something visible, tests it honestly, responds to feedback, and explains the decisions behind the final result.
What you will create
Use these deliverables as milestones for Design for the Person Everyone Forgot. Adapt the details to your interests, available time, and real-world opportunities.
Research lived experience, barriers, assistive strategies, co-design, dignity, intersectional needs, accessibility standards, and unintended consequences. Document the needs, constraints, credible sources, and perspectives of a specific underserved or overlooked user group.
Turn the evidence into a focused plan for the inclusive design prototype and accessibility case study, including success criteria, ethical boundaries, scope, and a realistic path to completion.
Create the first complete version of the inclusive design prototype and accessibility case study. Include an exclusion audit, user needs framework, co-design notes, multiple concepts, tested prototype, accessibility review, and implementation recommendations.
test with consenting people who understand the need or with an informed accessibility reviewer, then document changes and limits Record what happened, what failed, what users or reviewers said, and which changes you made.
Publish the final inclusive design prototype and accessibility case study with a portfolio-ready case study showing the challenge, evidence, process, revisions, results, limits, and next version.
Make the work stronger
For Design for the Person Everyone Forgot, use these checkpoints to protect the quality of the work without turning the project into a performance for admissions.
Skills you can build
College application value
Can demonstrate initiative, curiosity, reflection, and growth through the student’s choices, response to setbacks, work with a specific underserved or overlooked user group, and development of Inclusive Design, User Research, and Prototyping.
The goal of Design for the Person Everyone Forgot is not to manufacture an impressive activity. Do real work, keep evidence of the process, and reflect honestly on what changed.
Related college majors
Use Design for the Person Everyone Forgot as a clue, then open a related major guide to compare coursework, career directions, reality checks, and other ways to test the field.
Turn ideas into experiences people can see and use.
Shape interior spaces around how people live, work, and feel.
Study the space where people and technology meet, then design systems that are easier, safer, clearer, and more humane to use.
Design for the Person Everyone Forgot is an original Compass educational starting point designed around real work, visible evidence, feedback, and reflection. It is not an admissions guarantee.