Guest post written by Keanu Glover, Junior Designer with the Zooniverse team at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago from June-August 2023. Prior to joining the Zooniverse, Keanu was an i.c.stars intern, an intensive 6-month program supporting pathways to economic mobility through IT and software engineering workforce skills training, job experience, and leadership development. After his role within the Zooniverse, Keanu will join the United Airlines Apprenticeship Program.

Pivoting into a new field of work brings forth so many different thoughts such as “can I do the task” “how will I fit in” “do I belong”? For me, transitioning from basketball and athletics to Tech and Design had me nervous at first but once I was submerged into the tech space, I realized the skills I developed playing sports transitioned seamlessly. When I got the opportunity to work for the Zooniverse at Adler Planetarium as a Junior Designer I realized I was given the opportunity to work for great people and contribute to a great situation. 

Before this opportunity I had never been to the Adler or even thought about what it was. Most of the time these types of opportunities are intimidating. Lucky for me it didn’t have that effect on me. I had prepared myself for whatever opportunities were for me! 

I was really excited, having the opportunity to learn something new, be a part of something bigger than myself, contributing to a real project that I can add to my portfolio, and also having the opportunity to build new relationships with experienced professionals.

During my interview with Laura Trouille (Zooniverse Co-PI and Adler VP of Science Engagement) as part of asking about what interested me in applying for the position, she asked, “Do you have past connections with the Adler or astronomy?” This reminded me of a story about moving countless times when I was young, driving across state lines. When the sun would set and the stars would show themselves, my mother used to listen to Janet Jackson and I used to look out the backseat window at the stars. While I looked out I would wonder if our new destination would be our last.

My first week working with the Zooniverse was different, for sure! I had just got out of the i.c.stars program where I was working 12 hour days for 4 months, building a data collection application with a small group of 5 people. All hands on deck as they say.

When I first met Sean Miller, the Zooniverse designer and my mentor for the summer, I learned that work doesn’t have to be as intense. For example my first day we sat down and he told me we would have a meeting in the morning and another in the afternoon. I asked him “what time, like 8am?” He looked at me and said “whoa no! We are going to meet at 10 am”. I was caught by surprise, but was so happy he said that. I quickly understood every company has different cultures. (The Zooniverse strives to schedule meetings between 10-4pm to accommodate different work schedules, commute times, work-life balance.)

For me I felt an energy working with the Zooniverse team. Everyone knows what they are supposed to do, and how every element of their roles are interconnected. For me coming in as a summer intern I didn’t want to disappoint my job placement program: i.c.stars, my family, or Sean, who hand picked me to join his team. 

Sean gave me all the tools and time I needed to get the most out of my time here at Zooniverse. He never made me feel less than for not knowing something; he was always patient, understanding, and an outstanding communicator. I think it’s safe to say that he enjoyed my company for the three month period. Sean is an amazing teacher with so many resources that helped prepare me for the project and the type of work I wanted to get into after the Zooniverse. The rest of the Zooniverse team were beyond accepting of me! They were always willing to explain and help me with things about the Zooniverse site and the Adler as a whole and when it wasn’t about work they always invited me to the beach for a walk or to have lunch.

I had never participated in Zooniverse before I joined the team. When I was tasked to research the platform my first thought was “this is really cool”. I always wondered if there was a platform that allowed people to feel like a true researcher. The platform reminded me of when I would have days off from school and I would watch the Travel Channel, History channel, and Animal Planet. When I was younger I would think it was the coolest thing to be a part of those experiences.

I picked up the concept of the site pretty quickly. I made over 80 different classifications, commented on other projects, and tried to build my own project using zooniverse.org/lab just so I could put myself in the volunteers’ shoes. The site was easy to use and was not complicated at all to navigate. The more I used it the more I started to think about features I could add and how I could help the Zooniverse platform evolve and grow. For example, Sean and I realized that on the ‘Recents’ page (where you can see your recent classifications for any given Zooniverse project) the participants’ recent classifications maxed out at 20. Now if I was a participant that has classified a lot, I might want to see more than 20 recent classifications. So one of the new features we decided to add was paginations and being able to to view and paginate through 100 recent projects. 

My main objective was to experience a professional design sprint for the Zooniverse “Recents Page”. Breaking down the project into three main phases. Discovery phase is where we deep dive into UI/UX research and gain better knowledge on why design is so important. The Definition phase is when I was able to set a foundation for my redesign, meaning  keeping things in scope and remembering to build what the page needs and how it fits into the bigger picture of page designs for Zooniverse, this was a challenge. I found during the discovery and definition phases researching other websites similar to Zooniverse was a big help and allowed me to build on ideas based on the functionality of these other websites and platforms. The Development phase is where we started to build the project. During this phase of the project I learned how critical it is to always have the volunteer in mind when designing new functionalities, but also making sure to keep features that already exist on the Zooniverse platform. The Retrospective phase allowed me to look at my progress and knowledge I gained this summer.  I hope my redesign of the ‘Recents’ page is well received, As I redesigned it with the volunteer in mind. I wanted to keep things similar but give it an upgrade on new features and provide a little more versatility in finding classified projects. Giving the volunteer what they need before they ask for it is something I wanted to do. This redesign will be great for super-users as well as new participants. Stay tuned for more info and announcements about the new Recents Page.

I have come a long way. This time working for Zooniverse is an experience that I will never forget. This experience was about me developing new skills and embracing new challenges. It was also about creating an opportunity for future interns to follow in my footsteps. Leaving a great impression was very important to me. Being professional, showing a great work ethic, and also being a leader. For anyone who has the opportunity to work for Zooniverse I think it is a great place to be and it provides the opportunity to learn and be a part of a community who will support your learning process. I loved my time here at Zooniverse and I wish I could stay!