IH02-MonicaTanza
From IEOR 170 Spring 2007
Contents |
[edit] Persuasive Design
[edit] Problem Description
Flyering on Sproul is a waste of time and paper as well as a nuisance to students. However, when asked why they flyer, student groups confess that they can think of no other way to advertise their programs. Also, some students want to stay informed about what is going on at campus but do not walk down Sproul. There needs to be a more effective way for students to be informed and for student groups to advertise.
[edit] User Group
The groups that this focuses on are the students and members of the community who want to be involved and informed about on campus events as well as the groups that want to inform them about their events.
[edit] Problem Context and Forces
First, we will look at the student groups. To flyer, they must spend the time and money (as well as natural resources) to make copies of their flyers. Then they must spend more time distributing the flyers. This whole process is a big drain on time as well as paper.
Second, there are the students and members of the community who want to be informed. They are all literate and computer savvy with little time to stop and grab a flyer. For the most part, they do not want to bothered on the way to class with little scraps of paper and I hope some of them are also motivated to not take flyers due to environmental considerations. Furthermore, if the students want to learn about a group they are not already a part of, they better hope to run into someone flyering or see a poster on a wall or hear about it from a friend. With so much going on, it is possible and likely that most students will never know about a certain event, even if it is one they are interested in.
The current methods out there besides flyering (which I consider a failure) are either calendars on each individual groups’ websites (if they even have one) or Berkeley Events Calendar (http://events.berkeley.edu/). The problem with BEC, is that while it allows any student to submit an event, students are unaware of its existence and do not use it to replace flyering (rendering it useless). Also, its system of dividing events shows the obvious focus it has for “profession” groups (as in, it does not cater well to student groups).
[edit] Solution
I propose a new interface that is more focused on students that Berkeley Events Calendar. First of all, all groups would be informed and given access to upload events. Word would be spread and hopefully flyering could be stopped. The way that the calendar can be more student centered would be through the way that events can be organized and viewed. There’d be a big calendar as the home page and tabs to sort events in a multitude of ways: by date, by group, by type of group (ie engineering societies) or by event type. I think this division would be more appreciated by students.
