Adira Andlay and Jess Redmond, Senior Researchers at the Institute for Community Studies at The Young Foundation, discuss their learnings about data needs for university civic impact and the dangers of assumption-based decision making when designing tools for the sector.
The beauty of user-centred design (UCD) lies in its ability to rapidly challenge assumptions. When The Institute for Community Studies (ICS) embarked on the Civic Impact Dashboard project, we assumed that university stakeholder and audience roles would be clearly defined, and that users wanted to see and access numerical data reflecting their universities' civic impact. However, during our first workshop, these assumptions were quickly dismantled. Our UCD approach has already revealed a much more complex and holistic set of needs and desires.
Overview of Workshop 1: defining user needs
The aim of Workshop 1 involving our user testing group of university staff was to identify the critical data questions that potential users of the Civic Impact Dashboard wanted to answer. This would uncover a spectrum of needs, including accessibility requirements, that would inform the dashboard's design. By understanding why someone would use the dashboard, we can specify detailed user requirements and begin formulating potential solutions. These solutions would then be refined and tested further in subsequent workshops.
In user-centred design, understanding the 'pains' (obstacles to achieving goals) and 'gains' (opportunities unlocked when a goal is achieved) of users is crucial. To surface these, we guided workshop participants through a series of reflection questions:
- Based on your background, expertise and job position, can you identify a goal for your place or local community (civic goal) that you aim to fulfil by accessing data to support a decision?
- In your current job, what is a challenge (pain point) that you face in being able to read, evaluate, and apply data with university civic strategic aims?
- In your current job, what would be a valuable benefit (gain point) in being able to read, evaluate, and apply data with university civic strategic aims?
These questions framed our analysis of the real-world challenges that university staff face when interacting with data. By understanding their 'pains' and what would constitute 'gains', we gained invaluable insights.
Three key challenges
During the workshop, participants used a digital collaborative tool (Miro) to map their thoughts, ideas, and scenarios across several key activities:
- User Needs Identification: Participants shared specific data-related challenges they face, such as difficulty finding reliable local data and limited understanding of how to interpret existing datasets. A few more factors included:
- a broader definition of civic index measures ie, to include arts and culture, health, etc, which are not currently recognised.
- mixed data types as civic agreements require both quantitative and qualitative data.
- universality, as benchmarking across universities is challenging.
- User needs scenarios: We developed four example users, or 'user personas', based on staff roles: Evaluation, Partnerships, Community Engagement and Data Expert. These personas were based on the information the user testing group shared about their roles and responsibilities when they applied to be involved. We observed that the user testing group broadly saw themselves as cutting across all these roles, showing the 'holistic' nature of the civic university work. Participants highlighted that equitable prosperity must be a key focus, demonstrating impact, and proving a key attraction for students. They also acknowledged the need for sensitivity around how inequalities data is represented and shared, for example in terms of reflections on local areas.
- Accessibility mapping: Accessibility was a recurring theme throughout the workshop. Users highlighted the need for inclusive design that caters for those with limited technical skills, as well as the importance of information design in ensuring data is not skewed in a visual representation.
A multidisciplinary approach
One of the key takeaways from Workshop 1 was the importance of a multidisciplinary approach. Workshop participants came from diverse backgrounds, bringing expertise not just in data, but in design, user engagement, and education. Yet all saw a similar mission for using data: to ensure civic work done with communities is valued and valuable to their institutions, using storytelling with narrative and numerical data to communicate compelling and holistic stories.
Based on these insights, the prototype wireframe versions of the Civic Impact Dashboard will be developed and tested by the same user group over the coming months. This iterative process will allow us to refine the dashboard based on real-time feedback, in preparation for an alpha version that we plan to release by the end of the year.
To learn with us, subscribe to this blog and follow @icstudiesuk for regular updates.
Adira Andlay and Jess Redmond, Senior Researchers at the Institute for Community Studies at The Young Foundation, discuss their learnings about data needs for university civic impact and the dangers of assumption-based decision making when designing tools for the sector.
The beauty of user-centred design (UCD) lies in its ability to rapidly challenge assumptions. When The Institute for Community Studies (ICS) embarked on the Civic Impact Dashboard project, we assumed that university stakeholder and audience roles would be clearly defined, and that users wanted to see and access numerical data reflecting their universities' civic impact. However, during our first workshop, these assumptions were quickly dismantled. Our UCD approach has already revealed a much more complex and holistic set of needs and desires.
Overview of Workshop 1: defining user needs
The aim of Workshop 1 involving our user testing group of university staff was to identify the critical data questions that potential users of the Civic Impact Dashboard wanted to answer. This would uncover a spectrum of needs, including accessibility requirements, that would inform the dashboard's design. By understanding why someone would use the dashboard, we can specify detailed user requirements and begin formulating potential solutions. These solutions would then be refined and tested further in subsequent workshops.
In user-centred design, understanding the 'pains' (obstacles to achieving goals) and 'gains' (opportunities unlocked when a goal is achieved) of users is crucial. To surface these, we guided workshop participants through a series of reflection questions:
- Based on your background, expertise and job position, can you identify a goal for your place or local community (civic goal) that you aim to fulfil by accessing data to support a decision?
- In your current job, what is a challenge (pain point) that you face in being able to read, evaluate, and apply data with university civic strategic aims?
- In your current job, what would be a valuable benefit (gain point) in being able to read, evaluate, and apply data with university civic strategic aims?
These questions framed our analysis of the real-world challenges that university staff face when interacting with data. By understanding their 'pains' and what would constitute 'gains', we gained invaluable insights.
Three key challenges
During the workshop, participants used a digital collaborative tool (Miro) to map their thoughts, ideas, and scenarios across several key activities:
- User Needs Identification: Participants shared specific data-related challenges they face, such as difficulty finding reliable local data and limited understanding of how to interpret existing datasets. A few more factors included:
- a broader definition of civic index measures ie, to include arts and culture, health, etc, which are not currently recognised.
- mixed data types as civic agreements require both quantitative and qualitative data.
- universality, as benchmarking across universities is challenging.
- User needs scenarios: We developed four example users, or 'user personas', based on staff roles: Evaluation, Partnerships, Community Engagement and Data Expert. These personas were based on the information the user testing group shared about their roles and responsibilities when they applied to be involved. We observed that the user testing group broadly saw themselves as cutting across all these roles, showing the 'holistic' nature of the civic university work. Participants highlighted that equitable prosperity must be a key focus, demonstrating impact, and proving a key attraction for students. They also acknowledged the need for sensitivity around how inequalities data is represented and shared, for example in terms of reflections on local areas.
- Accessibility mapping: Accessibility was a recurring theme throughout the workshop. Users highlighted the need for inclusive design that caters for those with limited technical skills, as well as the importance of information design in ensuring data is not skewed in a visual representation.
A multidisciplinary approach
One of the key takeaways from Workshop 1 was the importance of a multidisciplinary approach. Workshop participants came from diverse backgrounds, bringing expertise not just in data, but in design, user engagement, and education. Yet all saw a similar mission for using data: to ensure civic work done with communities is valued and valuable to their institutions, using storytelling with narrative and numerical data to communicate compelling and holistic stories.
Based on these insights, the prototype wireframe versions of the Civic Impact Dashboard will be developed and tested by the same user group over the coming months. This iterative process will allow us to refine the dashboard based on real-time feedback, in preparation for an alpha version that we plan to release by the end of the year.
To learn with us, subscribe to this blog and follow @icstudiesuk for regular updates.
