This past Friday, myself and fellow UBCevents Communications Coordinator Warren Scheske, along with Luke Kysow, our colleague from UBC IT, conducted our first user feedback session looking at a new feature we have in the works for UBCevents, as well as how best to integrate this with the UBCevents website.We held the session in a room in the basement of Brock Hall; I’ve never been there before, so I was nervous that people would get lost in the building.
- Luke and Warren wait at room 0032.
Luckily, Warren helped point the way, and before I knew it, our five enthusiastic, happy lab rats users had arrived and were ready to help us out!
We purposefully invited people we knew who would fit into one of two categories: people who worked with the UBCevents website entering events or who use it to see what’s happening; and people who either already do or are planning to integrate a UBCevents calendar into their group’s website.
Chatting afterwards, Luke, Warren and I couldn’t help exclaiming how absolutely floored and excited we were by what we heard. Our intrepid users not only told us what they thought about the new feature, but also how they envision their use of the UBCevents site changing from how they currently use it, once this feature launches. They even predicted (!) a number of features that our team is already exploring and looking into implementing for the future: all good signs that our instincts are leading us in the right direction to give them — and you — what you are looking for in using the UBCevents website. Fabulous!
Luke, Daniella and Bjorn code away.
Now comes the even more exciting part: turning those comments and feedback into clear suggestions and changes for what’s in place, to make it that much more usable and helpful to all our users, at all levels of familiarity or complexity. The best part for me? Seeing how enthusiastic our users were to start playing around with the new feature.
…and naturally, you’re all wondering just what this mysterious new feature is. Alas, we can’t let that out of the bag just yet, but we can tell you, based on what our focus group told us at this session, that it will make a lot of things a lot easier. And we’ll definitely announce it on the blog when it’s all ready!