Prototyping the Civic Impact Dashboard
Adira Andlay and Jess Redmond, Senior Researchers at the Institute for Community Studies at The Young Foundation, share their insights about challenges higher education staff face in understanding their university’s civic impact.
A difficulty with approaching design from the perspective of the user is it can reveal many ‘pain points’ that arise as the user achieves their goals. For those developing solutions to such problems, the challenge is recognising what is achievable within the scope of the project.
The user-centred design (UCD) journey undertaken by the Institute for Community Studies (ICS) to develop a Civic Impact dashboard is no different. Our work with our testing group of university staff has revealed challenges at different stages, and from different internal and external perspectives, when using data to explore their university’s impact. How should we, as partners seeking to support civic universities, decide which of these challenges we can most usefully tackle?
Workshop 2: Testing the user journey
Following Workshop 1, where we sought to understand the critical data questions that potential users of the Civic Impact Dashboard wanted to answer, staff at the ICS designed some low fidelity ‘prototypes’, or very basic representations of the final dashboard.
Prototypes are used in UCD approaches because they can help people to practically engage with the potential limitations and opportunities of the final design, and get immediate and targeted feedback from users.[1] ICS staff approached this prototyping in two ways:
- User journey mapping: A user journey map is a visual representation of the steps taken when using the dashboard to address a data need.[2]
- Early prototypes: By identifying a gap in an existing interactive dashboard tool supporting universities to assess their local civic (the Civic Impact Index)[3], ICS designed example screenshots of a dashboard screen that could be used to explore the Arts and Culture impact of a university.
These approaches were used to test whether the ICS had made the right assumptions about what university staff need to address their data goals. Rather than dealing in the abstract, presenting something users can interact with allows for concrete feedback on what the proposed solution is, and is not, addressing.
The user journey
Figure 1: User journey map
As we developed our user journey map, it became clear that, for many, pain points with data arise long before they might consult external data sources. Several members said the first challenge they faced around understanding and measuring university civic impact was operational, bringing challenges around collating data within the university. ‘Civic’ work at a higher education institution rarely sits under a single department; instead, the it engages with its local community both as part of dedicated outreach and through core activity, such as research and teaching.
Collating the impact of all these activities is difficult because staff across different departments and programmes often use ad-hoc measures or metrics to capture impact data (if impact measurement is considered at all) and the data is rarely consolidated by a central data team.
This poses a challenge for our Civic Impact dashboard, which focuses on understanding impact using external data sources such as the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The user testing group said the ‘user journey’ assumes these operational challenges have been resolved. In fact, long before looking at external data to understand impact, university staff face issues understanding exactly what university civic activity is and encompasses.
Another interesting observation from this part of the workshop was the importance of a identifying communities that are currently underserved by university activities. Users were keen to benchmark their university against comparable institutions, such as universities in similar geographic regions, universities of a similar type (eg, Russell Group), or universities with a similar focus (eg, arts focused). This was preferable to producing a ‘league table’ across all universities, which was seen as less meaningful, and introduced an undesirable framing of competition.
Data sources for university impact
Figure 2: Prototype screens exploring arts and culture impact
The prototype dashboard screens (Figure 2) opened an important conversation about how to integrate data from multiple sources, both external and internal to the university. Users wanted to see a granular, place-based picture of their university’s impact on their local community. However, as data is collected at different geographies, it can be difficult to map this effectively in a place (eg, data collected at ward level compared to across institution-specific geographies, such as Integrated Care Boards). The exercise of linking different data (eg, between different points in time, qualitative and quantitative, external and internal data) was identified as key for drawing out a picture of university civic engagement.
Taking the work forward
The design journey we are taking with the Civic Impact Dashboard highlights the complexities universities face, from fragmented internal data to integrating diverse external data sources. To help universities better understand and demonstrate their contribution to their communities, the dashboard we are developing can address some key challenge identified: such as allowing universities to benchmark against each other and use external data to explore their contribution to places. However, no one tool or resource will provide all the answers.
This work reveals an opportunity to meet wider challenges, being mindful and transparent about where the scope of dashboard will end, and how this work can evolve and build, with future resources and connection with work that is led by wider NCIA partners, such as:
- Feeding back learnings to NCCPE, who lead NCIA action learning groups focused on how universities measure their civic impact.[4]
- Developing our place dashboard next year, supporting universities to understand the conditions in their places, to meaningfully inform priorities.
To continue learning with us, subscribe to this blog and follow @icstudiesuk.
[1] Smith, Q. (2019) Prototyping User Experience, UX Matters. Available at: https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2019/01/prototyping-user-experience.php
[2] Strba, M. (2024) User Journey Map, UXtweak. Available at: https://www.uxtweak.com/guides/user-journey-map/
[3] MacDonald, E. (2022) Launch of the Civic Index, City-REDI Blog. Available at: https://blog.bham.ac.uk/cityredi/launch-of-the-civic-index/
[4] Owolade, F. et al. (2024) Becoming Civic: Reflections on the first phase of NCIA’s action learning programme. English: National Civic Impact Accelerator. Available at: https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Report-Becoming-civic-reflections-on-the-first-phase-of-NCIAs-Action-Learning-Programme.pdf.
Prototyping the Civic Impact Dashboard
Adira Andlay and Jess Redmond, Senior Researchers at the Institute for Community Studies at The Young Foundation, share their insights about challenges higher education staff face in understanding their university’s civic impact.
A difficulty with approaching design from the perspective of the user is it can reveal many ‘pain points’ that arise as the user achieves their goals. For those developing solutions to such problems, the challenge is recognising what is achievable within the scope of the project.
The user-centred design (UCD) journey undertaken by the Institute for Community Studies (ICS) to develop a Civic Impact dashboard is no different. Our work with our testing group of university staff has revealed challenges at different stages, and from different internal and external perspectives, when using data to explore their university’s impact. How should we, as partners seeking to support civic universities, decide which of these challenges we can most usefully tackle?
Workshop 2: Testing the user journey
Following Workshop 1, where we sought to understand the critical data questions that potential users of the Civic Impact Dashboard wanted to answer, staff at the ICS designed some low fidelity ‘prototypes’, or very basic representations of the final dashboard.
Prototypes are used in UCD approaches because they can help people to practically engage with the potential limitations and opportunities of the final design, and get immediate and targeted feedback from users.[1] ICS staff approached this prototyping in two ways:
- User journey mapping: A user journey map is a visual representation of the steps taken when using the dashboard to address a data need.[2]
- Early prototypes: By identifying a gap in an existing interactive dashboard tool supporting universities to assess their local civic (the Civic Impact Index)[3], ICS designed example screenshots of a dashboard screen that could be used to explore the Arts and Culture impact of a university.
These approaches were used to test whether the ICS had made the right assumptions about what university staff need to address their data goals. Rather than dealing in the abstract, presenting something users can interact with allows for concrete feedback on what the proposed solution is, and is not, addressing.
The user journey
Figure 1: User journey map
As we developed our user journey map, it became clear that, for many, pain points with data arise long before they might consult external data sources. Several members said the first challenge they faced around understanding and measuring university civic impact was operational, bringing challenges around collating data within the university. ‘Civic’ work at a higher education institution rarely sits under a single department; instead, the it engages with its local community both as part of dedicated outreach and through core activity, such as research and teaching.
Collating the impact of all these activities is difficult because staff across different departments and programmes often use ad-hoc measures or metrics to capture impact data (if impact measurement is considered at all) and the data is rarely consolidated by a central data team.
This poses a challenge for our Civic Impact dashboard, which focuses on understanding impact using external data sources such as the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The user testing group said the ‘user journey’ assumes these operational challenges have been resolved. In fact, long before looking at external data to understand impact, university staff face issues understanding exactly what university civic activity is and encompasses.
Another interesting observation from this part of the workshop was the importance of a identifying communities that are currently underserved by university activities. Users were keen to benchmark their university against comparable institutions, such as universities in similar geographic regions, universities of a similar type (eg, Russell Group), or universities with a similar focus (eg, arts focused). This was preferable to producing a ‘league table’ across all universities, which was seen as less meaningful, and introduced an undesirable framing of competition.
Data sources for university impact
Figure 2: Prototype screens exploring arts and culture impact
The prototype dashboard screens (Figure 2) opened an important conversation about how to integrate data from multiple sources, both external and internal to the university. Users wanted to see a granular, place-based picture of their university’s impact on their local community. However, as data is collected at different geographies, it can be difficult to map this effectively in a place (eg, data collected at ward level compared to across institution-specific geographies, such as Integrated Care Boards). The exercise of linking different data (eg, between different points in time, qualitative and quantitative, external and internal data) was identified as key for drawing out a picture of university civic engagement.
Taking the work forward
The design journey we are taking with the Civic Impact Dashboard highlights the complexities universities face, from fragmented internal data to integrating diverse external data sources. To help universities better understand and demonstrate their contribution to their communities, the dashboard we are developing can address some key challenge identified: such as allowing universities to benchmark against each other and use external data to explore their contribution to places. However, no one tool or resource will provide all the answers.
This work reveals an opportunity to meet wider challenges, being mindful and transparent about where the scope of dashboard will end, and how this work can evolve and build, with future resources and connection with work that is led by wider NCIA partners, such as:
- Feeding back learnings to NCCPE, who lead NCIA action learning groups focused on how universities measure their civic impact.[4]
- Developing our place dashboard next year, supporting universities to understand the conditions in their places, to meaningfully inform priorities.
To continue learning with us, subscribe to this blog and follow @icstudiesuk.
[1] Smith, Q. (2019) Prototyping User Experience, UX Matters. Available at: https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2019/01/prototyping-user-experience.php
[2] Strba, M. (2024) User Journey Map, UXtweak. Available at: https://www.uxtweak.com/guides/user-journey-map/
[3] MacDonald, E. (2022) Launch of the Civic Index, City-REDI Blog. Available at: https://blog.bham.ac.uk/cityredi/launch-of-the-civic-index/
[4] Owolade, F. et al. (2024) Becoming Civic: Reflections on the first phase of NCIA’s action learning programme. English: National Civic Impact Accelerator. Available at: https://civicuniversitynetwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Report-Becoming-civic-reflections-on-the-first-phase-of-NCIAs-Action-Learning-Programme.pdf.
