March 18 2008 uCamp Planning

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Last updated: Apr 02, 2008Version comment
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Planning for JA-SIG Spring 2008 uCamp

Date, Time and Venue

March 18, 2008
11:00 PDT
14:00 EDT
Skype Conference Call

Attendees

Tim Heidinger, Wil Johnson, Cindy Nahm, Tom O'Brian, James Dudek, Joe Yin, Allison Bloodworth, Gary Thompson, Paul Zablosky

Agenda

  1. Introduction of participants
  2. Brief introduction to the Kuali Student teams (UX, UI, UC) and what they are working on
  3. Brief introduction of the Fluid team members' backgrounds
  4. Introduction to potential user-centered design (UCD) processes could be valuable to Kuali Student based on where they are in the project (see uCamp Planning Page)
  5. Ideas from all team members of what UCD processes could help them at the end of April
  6. Discussion and prioritization of these ideas
  7. Strawperson list of uCamp activities
    • Presentations (topic and presenter)
    • Lightning talks
    • Demos
    • Exercises
    • Workshops
  8. Next steps
  9. Other topics
    • The KS User Experience BOF
    • Post-conference interactions on Thursday and Friday?

Notes

1. Introduction

Tim opened the meeting by introducing the participants. Most of the UI and UX teams plan to attend the JA-SIG conference.

2. The Kuali Student Teams: UX, UI, UC

The UX team is engaged in coming up with wireframes for the a proof-of-concept implementation which is due at the end of May. This will be a very simple throw-away example, with one student enrolling in 2 courses and then dropping 1 course.

The UI team has been evaluating UI toolkits, and has chosen GWT. They are settling on best practices, and filling in gaps in GWT.

The UC team is just finishing up gathering different use cases for LUM (Learning Unit Management) and will be moving next to PI (Person Identity).

There was discussion of the process used to identify use cases and their similarity to scenarios. There is an intention to strengthen the relationship between the UC and UX teams.

3. Introduction of the Fluid Team Members
  • Allison Bloodworth is an interaction designer working on the Fluid project. She has a lot of User Centered Design experience.
  • Gary Thompson is the lead for User Experience at Unicon, providing services to the Sakai, uPortal, and Fluid projects.
  • Paul Zablosky (UBC) is project liaison for the Fluid and uPortal projects.
  • Colin Clark is an accessibility expert with the ATRC and is the technical lead for Fluid.
  • Daphne Ogle is an interaction designer and Fluid design lead (but will not be attending the conference).
  • Other members of Fluid (Eli Cochran) will also be attending the conference

Daphne, Eli and Allison are involved in the selection and hiring of a person to fill the User Experience lead for Kuali Student.

Introduction of potential UCD processes that could assist Kuali Student

A goal of the uCamp is to assist the Kuali Student project. This means we have to figure out how to help with the user experience efforts of Kuali Student. It is hoped that members of the UC team will come to the conference. (James is hoping to attend.)

Members of the Fluid project can offer presentations, take part in discussions, respond to questions, and conduct workshops and exercises.

6. Discussion and prioritization

There was general agreement that a presentation on personas and discussion of their utility and uses would be productive. A round of lightning talks is also desirable, with contributions from both KS and Fluid.

7. Strawperson list
  1. Welcome
  2. Lightning talks - find out where people are at
    • Kuali Student
    • Fluid
  3. Persona Discussion
    • Presentation: How personas are derived and created (Allison)
    • Data from KS researches is supplied (KS team)
    • Exercise: The process of persona creation, using KS data
  4. Discussion: Getting from Use Cases to Code (Gary)
    • How Use Cases are created (KS)
    • Use Cases to Scenarios, with personas, to wireframes
    • The employment of design patterns
    • Best practices for all of the processes
  5. Open discussion and exercises
8. Next steps

All members of the Kuali Student team are invited to contribute to the refinement of the uCamp plan at http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/WACM. We will organize future planning meetings as required.

Everyone is invited to join the conference participants social network at http://ja-sigspring08.crowdvine.com/.

9. Other topics

A Birds-of-Feather (BOF) session has been scheduled for Tuesday, April 29th at 11:30. The agenda for this session is not yet set. We can use it for a discussion of specific issues, or address a specific topic.

Colin Clark will be attending the uCamp. He can talk about accessibility and approaches to accessibility testing.

The KS team will be meeting after the conference (on Thursday and Friday). Allison will be available to work with them on Thursday.

Everyone is encouraged to come up with ideas for lightning talks and post them on the wiki page, as well as indicating an interest in those talks they would like to hear. A lightning talk can be as short as one minute, or as long as ten minutes. Some presenters use prepared materials, and some don't. We will pre-schedule a list of lightning talks, but they can also be proposed and delivered after the uCamp has started.