UC Berkeley

Berkeley UX Program

Staff

Rachel Hollowgrass, UX Lead

Rachel Hollowgrass is the lead for the UX Program and UX Lead for Student Information Systems / CalCentral. She founded the systemwide group UCUX. She has contributed to consumer applications at Apple, math curricula at Stanford, healthcare at Kaiser, and climate research at the Berkeley Lab. She has been at the Berkeley campus since 2008.

Adrienne Lee, UX Designer

Adrienne Lee is a user experience designer for SIS and CalCentral at UC Berkeley. Previously, she has done graphic design work at UC Davis and UX Design at Kaiser Permanente. Adrienne holds a B.A. in Design and Psychology from UC Davis and a Master’s in Human Computer Interaction + Design from University of Washington.

Student Interns

Cameron Kurtz, UX Intern

Cameron Kurtz is a UX intern on the UX team. He is in his second year in the graduate MIMS program.

Sarah Suen, UX Intern

Sarah Suen is a UX intern on the UX team. She is a 3rd year student in Cognitive Science & Data Science.

Berkeley IT

Berkeley User Experience Program

Principles

Usability Principles for UC Berkeley

UX Program

Mission: Improve the usefulness and usability of projects.

Methods:

Provide user experience expertise to projects in need.
Offer professional development opportunities to staff in UX-adjacent roles.
Grow UX community via skill and knowledge sharing, meetups, presentations and other events.

Have a UX-ready project?

Inquire about working with the UX Program: Berkeley UX Inquiry

Systemwide: UCUX
Berkeley campus: Communities of practice

Note: For accessibility concerns, consult with the campus Web Access Team.

Past Events and Projects

Usability assessments for project teams

Website and Application Reviews Note: Berkeley VPN is required to view.

Past events

Process Overview

Challenge and Opportunity

Campus IT teams often lack UX expertise.
IT projects can fall short in usability.

Response

Berkeley UX offers expertise and suggestions.
Project teams can adopt, modify or ignore suggestions.

Process Details

Identify UX-Ready Projects
- Find projects whose teams are ready for UX suggestions.
- For each project, ask team which project aspects have usability challenges that the project team could act on. Examples:
  - Navigation
  - Information architecture
  - Interaction patterns
  - Visual design
  - Mobile friendliness
Match UX resources to project needs
- Based on scope, timeline, resources required, and availability.
Co-create assessment plan with project team
- Ensure that the scope and issues match team needs
- UX and project team work together to write any protocols, scripts, etc.
Carry out plan
- If plan includes usability interviews, invite a project team member to each session.
Write findings and suggestions
Present to findings and suggestions at community event, e.g. Usability Workshop
- Findings are presented in a community setting so that other teams can benefit from seeing other issues that other projects face.

Next Steps for Project Teams

Take a few minutes to identify which aspects of your project could benefit from UX suggestions. Also consider if those aspects are actionable and have reasonable timelines, dependencies, etc.; that is, which aspects are available to change via software development, revised user practices, enhanced documentation, etc. Also consider if the resources such as time, skills, permission, etc. exist to make those kinds of changes.

Once your team and project are ready to explore usability, contact Berkeley UX:

user-experience@berkeley.edu

Note: Berkeley UX is limited in the number of projects we can work with each year. We will accommodate as many as we can.

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