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