On the 11th November, the APT STAIRS team gathered together all the project demonstrator leaders to firstly to say thank you for all their hard work and secondly to help us with the second part of our project - the API developments on Google Docs.
The lunch gathered just over 25 lecturers, researchers and students from the six Bloomsbury Colleges (BBK, IOE, RVC, LSHTM, SoP) and the LIDC, where we brainstormed ideas on future developments of Google Docs. We felt the best way to approach the brainstorming session was to use the world cafe style, where groups of people sit around small tables covered with paper table cloths to write and share ideas with one another, moving from table to table every 20 minutes or so. A member of the APT STAIRS team hosted the discussion on each table to encourage new ideas and build links to existing stands.
Each conversation was steered by three fictional personas - Jim Spears, Patricia Connely and Sally Chamberlain, which we created from the bloomsbury web use survey results. To help with the discussion, we asked the group to imagine how each persona would use Google Docs and how the service could be improved for them.
The Demonstrator Lunch was a great success, from the group's enthusiasm and participation and the ideas that emerged from the brainstorming session, which we will be sharing on the website shortly. Some API development ideas that we came up with before to use as an example at the lunch were the Ship's Log, The Communication Tools and the Archive Tool (please click on the links to view the wireframe designs).
