Itana Notes 05/05/17-Notes taken by Daniel Black and edited and posted by Dana Miller both from Miami University of Ohio

Presenter: Jenn Stringer, Associate CIO at UC Berkeley

Topic: Academic Innovation Studio at UC Berkeley

• Got started at UC Berkeley and learned about what “student success” meant

• Started working on a collaborative service model on the campus

• AIS started as a faculty-facing service space turned into a space to connect faculty with people from several domains

• Success is due in large part to the focus her team has on “design thinking”
  ◦ Design thinking is a user-centered approach to design

• steps

  1. emphasize

  2. define

  3. ideate

  4. prototype

  5. Test

• clarifications
  • UI is what people use to interact with a product or service

  • UX is how people feel when doing something

• UX Design and ITSM are “natural partners”

• UX Activities

  • field research

     ◦ go where the users are and see how they really work

     ◦ standardized to a checklist for consistency

  • synthesized research

     ◦ make sense if it all

     ◦ analyzed instructor persona dimensions

  • created persona profiles

     ◦ really about understanding that all faculty are not the same and each has different needs

     ◦ created about 12, used about 4 or 5 of the personas


     ◦ Q (Louis King): “How did you balance the service against the core user/persona of the service and other personas who are in the service’s audience but not core to it?” (paraphrase)

     ◦ A: “Reviewed products and services to match against the users’ and personas’ needs. Two tenured professors may still have different needs.” (paraphrase)


     ◦ Q: (Jim Phelps): “Do you think the greatest value came from having the personas or having the conversations that helped define the personas?”

     ◦ A: “The personas were most useful in developing shared mental models of users and audience. The personas in the abstract aren’t useful; we need to have the mental models that enable their utility.” (paraphrase)

  • Created Ideal Experience Map

     ◦ Ask users to map an “Ideal Experience”

     ◦ Created Vision Cards of the resultant conversation

  • Floorplay Workshop

     ◦ Used chips to represent 25 sq. ft. as analytical visualization of the spaces within the overall space

  • Body Storming

     ◦ Get in the space, physically model interactions, take notes, revise design

  • Space Plan

     ◦ Combine floorplay workshop and bodystorming

     ◦ contracted a spatial designer to work with the research and adjust with interior

design/architectural practices to design an actual floor plan

  • Journey Mapping

     ◦ gathered impressions and data over the course of using the service and mapped it to UX

       dimensions

  • Space + Partners + Commitment + Trust = AIS

• Secrets to Success for AIS

  • Worried that faculty wouldn’t participate. “If you build it, they might still not show up.”

  • They had the space whereas many other departments/divisions did not; very valuable asset.

  • How to win constituents/stakeholders over to becoming partners/users.

  • Didn’t brand the space as “AIS” but rather branded it as a collaborative shared space.

• Important elements of the space

  • It’s staffed.

  • It’s welcoming.

  • Active, vibrant space but also available for faculty to have quiet time between classes even

     without any emergent needs for help.

  • Lots of active, installed, dedicated space and utilities for video production, as opposed to

    leaving faculty to do this on their own laptops in their own spaces alone.

  • “Genius Bar” for walk-in help

• Partners

  • Research IT

  • Educational Technology Services

  • Center for Teaching & Learning

  • Library

  • Collaborative Services (Google, Box, etc.)

  • Berkeley Resource Center [...]

  • Digital Humanities Group

  • Facilities & Construction Management

• Commitment

  • Engaged them in the active design work to make it their effort, too.

  • Trust garnered by making the space a shared resource in use and ownership, making potential users partners as well.

• Measures of success

  • overflowing event room for an early event

  • “All of a sudden I don’t feel lonely.” —Giuliana Perco, Italian Studies, UC Berkeley

• Events - How is it used?

  • instructional design workshop

  • faculty user groups

  • teaching “dialogues”

  • Digital Humanities @ Berkeley Summer Institute

  • committee on teaching

• Metrics

  • 3020 visits

  • 126 public events

  • 74 private events

  • partnered with over 40 campus departments and organizations

• Used the model of the hackerspace as an inspiration for the approach