27 May 2010, 11:30am - 1pm Eastern, Sakai001 Conference Bridge (+1-812-856-7060/156.56.240.9##22X, Code: 22348#, PIN: 72524#)

Where We Are

• the community has created eight context scenarios for various project personas
• the Data Analysis Group has updated the project's personas based on prior feedback (not ready to share this as yet)
• the Data Analysis Group has started to develop requirements and lo-fidelity prototypes based on the context scenarios created thus far

Agenda

1. Introductions
2. Sharing persona updates (not ready to share this as yet)
3. Sharing a summary of the context scenarios received so far (see all context scenarios here)
4. Discussing initial requirements
5. Discussing initial lo-fidelity prototypes
   1. Stepping through two scenarios
   2. Reviewing each lo-fi sketch
      1. Content Authoring (rich text editor)
      2. Content Manager
      3. Content Item
      4. Bookmarklet
6. Next steps
   1. Getting user feedback on lo-fidelity prototypes?
   2. More context scenarios, requirements, lo-fidelity prototypes
   3. Connecting with Sakai community - narrowing scope, finding partners
   4. June conference
   5. June web meeting

Meeting Notes

In attendance

Sorry for any misspellings or omissions! Please feel free to edit the table above or send Gaurav a message if you do not have a wiki account.

Summary

Thanks to all who were able to make it to the meeting!

Persona Updates

We did not have time to wrap up updates to the personas in time to share at this meeting. The updates to the personas revolve around specific feedback on the personas for more details about the persona workflows, tools they are using and clarifying the personas' interactions with the library. These updates to the personas are coming soon.

Context Scenarios

We have received eight context scenarios from those throughout the community. Thanks very much to all who have contributed. The scenarios demonstrated creative design directions that met specific needs of our personas. The authors of context scenarios that were present at the meeting shared brief summaries of their context scenarios. All the submitted context scenarios can be seen here. We will continue to accept more context scenarios (more info about this in the Next Steps section below).

Initial Requirements

The context scenario-based requirements were shared with the group. These requirements are stated as needs that the persona has - for example, the "Ability to provide opportunities for debate around specific sections of a document." This is a user need as opposed to a solution specification.

By pulling out as many of these types of needs we see expressed throughout various context scenarios, we can group together and prioritize a list of requirements for our persona. At this stage, we are still working through context scenarios and experimenting with lo-fi prototypes. We will move towards grouping and prioritizing requirements a little further down the road once we have gotten more context scenarios developed.

Lo-fidelity Prototypes

The group discussed the initial lo-fidelity prototypes developed by the Data Analysis Group (DAG). These lo-fi prototypes were based on the context scenarios and resulting requirements. The DAG took the requirements and tried to fit them into a design framework that met the needs of the personas. Due to the variety of context scenarios submitted and the limited resources of the DAG, the lo-fi prototypes do not express the full range of context scenarios submitted. The DAG did, however, take into account all context scenario requirements and group them together where possible to inform the lo-fi prototypes to meet as many persona needs as possible.

Overall, the lo-fidelity prototypes developed present a Sakai 3 framework in which users have a "one-stop-shop" for all their Sakai 3 content (journal articles, books, images, videos, PDFs, Word docs, other Sakai content, etc.) that integrates seamlessly with their Sakai 3 content authoring interface. This allows users to embed content into other content very easily (i.e. a journal article into a syllabus, a video into an assignment, etc.). The other key piece of the framework is a bookmarklet that allows users to quickly add content from anywhere out on the web (i.e. journal articles, books, web pages, images, videos, etc.) to their Sakai 3 content to then be used freely throughout Sakai.

The main purpose of the lo-fi prototypes is to provide some design direction, raise questions and generate discussion. Please feel free to comment on the lo-fi prototypes with any questions, comments, concerns or new ideas you may have. The lo-fi prototypes are created in a "cheap" and high-level manner just so that they can easily be changed. Feel free to be critical and really question how these design ideas meet the needs of our personas.

A few interesting ideas and issues came up while sharing context scenarios and the lo-fi prototypes through walk-throughs of context scenarios:

• Sharing - as is seen in the Content Item lo-fi prototype, users have the ability to see where each content item has been used throughout the system (i.e. a journal article may be used as part of a syllabus, and assignment and an announcement). Thinking back to the interviews, some members of the group saw this as a valuable feature not just for the individual instructor, but a broader set of colleagues to see. A number of cases arose where instructors would set out to create a new syllabus by consulting similar syllabi of their colleagues (or assignments based on similar assignments created by their colleagues) or in co-teaching situations. Some of this may be addressed using the tags that are prevalent throughout the system, but many interesting questions about sharing academic work were raised:
  • Which types of users are more interested in sharing? Which are more averse to it? Why?
  • Are there certain types of work that are more readily shared than others?
  • Are users aware of the consequences of sharing various content?
  • What would a Sakai-wide sharing policy/interface look like?
• Social Interaction - related to sharing is social interaction in other contexts. For example, the ability to have a real-time discussion around specific portions of a journal article addresses the need of instructors to use technology in new ways to increase interaction and learning amongst students.
• Portability - our persona are accessing their data from an increasingly diverse set of locations (office, home, mobile device, social networking applications, etc). The Bookmarklet approach addresses this issue in part by allowing users to add content from anywhere on the web to one central location. It may be extended to allow other applications (i.e. TweetDeck) to use a "Sakai Content API" to quickly include an "Add to Sakai" button into their applications.
• Synchronization - related to portability is the ability to automatically synchronize related data sets from multiple different locations. For example, adding a new citation to a Zotero folder that is synchronized with Sakai, automatically appears in the synchronized Sakai content folder.

Next Steps

Lo-fi prototype feedback
The group is working on a strategy to get feedback on the initial lo-fi prototypes. Though the lo-fi prototypes are rather abstract, there is valuable feedback that can be gained by presenting them to users in a structured way, guiding users through the context needed to evaluate the purpose and flow of the design framework thus far.

More context scenarios, requirements, lo-fidelity prototypes
There are some key areas in which more context scenarios would be a valuable contribution to the project:

• Multimedia - what would it be like for one of our personas to make specific use of multimedia (images, videos, interactive exercises, etc.) in their course?
• Social Interaction - what would it be like for one of our personas to make specific use of opportunities to interact with students or colleagues around resources within Sakai 3 in new ways? (We already have a Cynthia context scenario that gets into this - would be great to see more)
• Mobile - what would it be like for one of our more mobile personas have a uniquely "mobile experience" with resources in Sakai 3? (We already have a Juanita context scenario that gets into this - would be great to see more)
• Ronald Moore - Ronald is the latest addition to the set of personas and there are no context scenarios for him. It would be great to detail context scenarios for activities Ronald regularly engages in.

We welcome all members of the community to contribute context scenarios following the guidelines posted on the Collaborative Context Scenarios Activity page. If you have time, it would be great to see new context scenarios by the time of the Sakai Conference - June 15th.

If you have even more time to get involved, we are opening up the process of culling requirements from context scenarios and developing lo-fi prototypes. If you are interested, please feel free to email Gaurav to get access to the proper documents.

Upcoming Sakai Conference
The Library and Sakai 3 Integration Project will be giving a presentation at the Denver Sakai Conference on June 15th from 5:15 to 6pm. Preceding the conference and at the conference, we will be looking to connect with others in the Sakai community to learn more about related design and development projects, where there are opportunities to collaborate and how best to move forward with the work we have accomplished so far.

June Web Meeting
We will have another web meeting on June 24th, 2010 from 11:30am to 1pm Eastern via the Sakai001 Conference Bridge to give an update on Sakai Conference happenings and discuss next steps.