Summary of Interview notes

Allison Bloodworth

  • Recent grad.
  • Works for e-Berkeley doing the campus calendar.
  • She has programming skills and spends about 10 hours in front of a computer.
  • News, alumni, fun events, projects, and research spot lights on a portal page.
  • Organization of information.
  • I don't like the FUN mailing list because everything goes there.
  • Connect to other SIMS who are in similar field of interests.
  • Geographic map that shows close-by alumni.
  • She's not sure whether the SIMS email accounts are still active. Not sure how current the information are on in the Alumni website.
  • Content/profile update reminder
  • Give alunmi a way to see all the current projects in SIMS.
  • Keep me updated with my classmates, such as picture gallery and news about them.
  • Want more social network features.
  • Wants a more casual forum
  • Other resources that she recommends us to look at:
  • Tribe
  • U-portal
  • Linked-In (for job finding)

Jodie Mathies

  • Graduated '84
  • From old school.
  • Senior software development manager @ oracle
  • Worked in various types of organizations such as Chevron and finance-related company.
  • Living in Bay Area
  • Background in DB
  • Interested in reading, gardening, raising two girls aged 7 and 8
  • Is in touch with 2-3 alumni regularly, mainly via email, not via the website
  • For general social, networking purpose, not job hunting
  • Have never used the search function in the website
  • Registered years ago but rarely use the website
  • Keeping up with the current SIMS community by being one of the judges of a master's project
  • Email is the primary means of getting the info of SIMS instead of the website
  • Found out about the website thru SIMS's main site
  • Suggests: * more content * more updated information * include a link to the website in the emails sent to alumni * email notification of any update/upgrade in the website
  • Is willing to participate in SIMS activities such as career consulting
  • She mentioned she checked the option to release her information to others (current students) but never got contacted
  • Is willing to walk through not only the new website but also the whole process of prototype building

Emily Liggett

  • recent grad (2003)
  • works at Oracle (UI design)
  • Lives in Foster City
  • Fairly Techie, speands a lot of time in front of a PC
  • registered after she got an email from Kevin (after graduation when they were cutting off thier email
  • finds the site easiest to use when looking through the list of names for a particular year VS from the earch page.
  • doesnt like the fact that you can seacrh only using one criteria, not a combination
  • WOULD update her information afetr changing jobs/ home location etc maybe a few weeks after the change
  • logs in once every few months.
  • has been getting emails about the distinguished lec series and is realy intereste din that.
  • interested in knwowing how teh alums are doing in thier fields, or if any famous persons come to gove talks.
  • likes the fact taht this way she is still a part of Cal
  • Interested in finding alums
  • has not been able to find anyone whe was not already in touch with
  • would like the news and events to highlight what alums are doing
  • maybe an ability for them to also post personal news like weddings/babies
  • likes her undergrad website (U of Virginia) doesnt use too much but it has specifics like "Career Connections" which is specifically for finding jobs which she liked some alums state that they want to be liasons for helping others and current studenst find jobs and you can go in a look at who is in
  • a Companey that you are interested in working for.
  • She works at Oracle and found another of her friends though that site in Oracle through that facility
  • Likes: The simplicity.. would not lik to see too many pictures
  • Would like to see some 'icons' representative of teh type of info (social, research etc) esp for events so that she can see events at a glance instead of spending too much time sorting trhough the things that dont really interest her

Norma Kobzina

  • Graduated '79
  • From old school.
  • Bio/sci library-librarian
  • Teaches @ nutritional science dept.
  • Lived in Walnut Creek
  • Not very technical
  • She signed for SIMS alumni a year ago but never used it.
  • She filled out simple information on the profile.
  • She signed up because Kristi sent her the link. She knew Kristi well.
  • She works on campus so she has other ways to contact with other alumni.
  • The best function that she likes from Cornell is the search engine to locate colleagues.
  • She used to sign up for the alumni site for the Old School. All the info was dropped when new system was set up.
  • She is interested in knowing more about the news and events in SIMS. News & Announcement on the front page.
  • She doesn't like color purple.
  • She would like to have more information about her classmates. That would make it interesting.
  • The links on the front page should be ordered with priority: news and announcement more important.
  • Would like something like a bulletin board.
  • She's contacting primarily with the people years before and after her.
  • Since she's teaching on campus, she would like to use the website for the purpose of reaching out to the students.

Kristi Mitchell

  • Alumni website created 3-4 years ago.
  • It's up to her and Kevin to decide everything.
  • To be useful: the website should have more content.
  • 3000 Old school = They are elderly, not necessarily ideal "networking" contacts for students
  • Wants to increase: alumni from early 80s til 90s.
  • Another system on campus called CADS that contains detailed information about alumni (including address, etc)
  • Any system change at this point must go through Kevin. This is a process Kristi wants to heavily change.
  • News and events email lists are automatically published in the alumni site. Alumni only events may be outdated on the site.
  • Hard copy newsletter died last year, no plans of resurrection.
  • People may update profile when they have a new job.
  • No faculty has access to this website.
  • She uses her site at least once a week for a quick search on alumni. Primarily used for current students' job search.
  • Some UI that she hates:
  • Microsoft shows up multiple times in the Quick Search. In other words, companies well listed so there are no repeats.
  • The color, font, page, and lack of pictures. "Looks like a beta test that never ended."
  • Some suggestions: Tie in donation information from CADS next to alumni

Kevin Heard

  • website started in 2002, masters students developed the alumni website, Kevin was the project manager/maintainer
  • the students were paid employees, this was not part of a final project
  • The school decided they wanted the website, Kristi makes the business decisions regarding the site
  • Hasn't really changed much since then
  • Basic goals - gathering place for alumni; network for jobs; maintain close contact with alumni community
  • Secondary goals - some way of steering students towards alumni - develop almost a mentor-like relationship, to help them choose classes, etc
  • Now, would like the site to be less static, bring people back to the site, to update their profiles
  • Don't want to integrate with Berkeley alumni network; wants a separate identity
  • In terms of maintenance, spends less than 5 hours a month on the site
  • routine maintenance
  • help users in a help desk time manner
  • manually perform alumni lookup, when a new user creates an account
  • stored in a mysql database
  • all recent grads (since 2002) are in the system, some are marked inactive if haven't registered their alumni account
  • main target is SIMS alumni, not alumni of the old school, although don't want to exclude them; alumni website favors current program
  • Logs: are standard web logs, but no log in logs
  • School may be willing to invest more money in if the alumni site created more participation from alumni in the school; either coming to school to give talks or donate money
  • For Kristi, would be nice to have a reports module
  • show lists of addresses
  • be able to mail specific, targeted lists
  • breakdown of areas of interests *Kevin's suggested Improvements
  • more sophisticated search interface
  • news could be upgraded; currently, only have news from faculty who provide content - not representative of all things happening at SIMS
  • highlight student projects
  • allow staff or faculty to submit calendar events
  • want alumni calendar to be integrated with campus wide calendar (eBerkeley project)
  • maybe allow for more mailing lists
  • reporting and mailing stuff for Kristi
  • Primary focus is professional networking
  • ok to integrate social aspect, but should stay professional

Interview lessons

  • Make sure that you confirm your interview time with your interviewee.
  • Make sure you ask for permission before starting the recorder.
  • At the beginning of the interview, briefly talk about your project and background.
  • Not to much verbal feedback such as "yeah" "uh-huh" but simply nod and smile. This might vary depending on individual.
  • At the end of the interview, turn off the recorder and end with an open-ended question "How do you feel about the interview?" That's when you can get a lot more information.