Students will launch their Civil Rights story quilt project by engaging with real people connected to quilting traditions or Civil Rights history, conducting structured interviews, and creating evidence-based empathy maps that will ground their later problem statements and designs.

Students will synthesize their Civil Rights interviews and empathy maps into clear, evidence-based problem definitions that guide the design of their individual quilt panels and the class community quilt. They will identify patterns across users, draft and critique How Might We statements, and produce a grounded design brief that connects historical themes, identity, and community to real user needs.

Students will generate a wide range of design possibilities for their Civil Rights story quilt panels, using structured ideation strategies grounded in real interview evidence. They will move from divergent brainstorming to evidence-based selection, producing annotated concept sketches that directly address documented user needs and themes of identity, justice, and community.

Students will create and refine low- and higher-fidelity prototypes of their Civil Rights story quilt panels, test them with real users or representative peers, document feedback, and revise their designs before constructing a stronger version for exhibition.

Students will validate their refined Civil Rights story quilt panels with a new audience member, document final feedback-driven revisions, and present their design journey—tracing user research, problem definition, prototyping, and iteration—during a Quilt Stories Festival-style exhibition.