Needs
Our approach was first to do a review of eighty four scenarios provided by John's Hopkins University and created by several academic institutions. The scenarios covered a broad range of activities related to content management systems, course management systems, and learning environment systems. These provided a high-level view of what users want and need from a system. Although these were useful in helping us scope what users want from a system, we felt we needed to take an up close look to get a feel for what a specific community of users might need/want from a system. We therefore, focused on the International Area Studies department at UC Berkeley. We interviewed four undergraduate students, two graduate students, and a resource specialist. We then created personas based on these interviewees and scenarios based on the information seeking and organization tasks they perform. You may view these pieces of our analysis by following the links on the left under needs.