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User experience is prevalent in the technology and healthcare industries but is still making its way into education. While staff satisfaction surveys and course evaluation surveys are common practice, they don’t always get to the core of the users’ experiences. This workshop introduces methods of user experience research and design, teaching you how to apply these methods to sustainability research, coordination & planning, and campus engagement. User experience research can help you learn about your audience, so you can streamline your project to impact behavior, knowledge, and/or campus culture. User experience design can help you deliver this project in a way that is intuitive, easy to use, and tailored to your audience.

At UC Davis, integrating user experience research and design into our work creates a fun, engaging learning experience for students and staff interested in energy efficiency. The key to our success with educational campaigns and product development is the time we spend working on user experience. Focusing on user experience allows us to create programs that meet our users where they’re at in their energy journey, because we’ve done the research and use it to design for our community.

The goal for this workshop is to shift the conversation from the policies, campaigns, and products offered by sustainability offices in higher education to a conversation about the people. Conversations based in user experience focus on the users: how they interact with sustainability at home versus on campus, what barriers exist for the adoption of sustainability practices, the spectrum of attitudes toward sustainability.

The workshop will begin with user research, specifically the lesser used qualitative research methods. Many of us have written a survey, but how often do you interview students, staff and faculty about sustainability initiatives? Data from 10-15 interviews can yield insights into motivations behind behavior change, attitude towards sustainability practices, and barriers that prevent people from engaging in sustainability practices. The second part of the workshop will focus on user-centered design, specifically how to use sketches and wireframes to plan a sustainability project or product. We will walk through a UC Davis example using our Energy Dashboard to apply user research findings to a user-centered design. Workshop participants will follow along by creating their own wireframe for a sustainability project on their campus.

Some examples of projects that can benefit from user experience research and design include:

• a sustainability website built with a content management system
• an education/outreach campaign targeting a sustainability practice
• planning for a LEED certification involving building occupant engagement

Facilitator

Kiernan Salmon, User Experience & Product Developer, University of California, Davis

Since 2013 Kiernan has been working on the Campus Energy Education Dashboard and TherMOOstat, products tailor-made to engage the UC Davis community in energy use on campus. She has over 8 years of experience in data analysis and data visualization, more than 6 years of experience in product development and project management, and 3 years of experience in user-centered research and design. Kiernan is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley University and has completed several projects in both research and design for UC Davis. Through seminars and informal conversations with her colleagues in Facilities Energy & Engineering, Kiernan has seen the impact of empowering her peers with user experience research and design knowledge. An introduction to user experience (UX) can lead to planning for UX research at the beginning of a project to ensure its success, pausing to consider the impact a project design will have on future users, and/or tailoring a project poster for its audience. Kiernan is excited to connect UX to sustainability and share methods of user experience research and design with the AASHE community.

Any questions about the workshop?
Please contact Daita Serghi, education@aashe.org