Dear Kristin,
The University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) is now seeking clients for consulting as part of a Fall 2017 master’s degree level course, SI 501: Contextual Inquiry & Consulting Foundations. During this one semester course, UMSI master’s degree students work with clients to identify, analyze, and recommend solutions for client problems related to products, services, and information processes. There is no cost to client organizations.
Over the years, SI 501 students have worked with more than 200 partner organizations including corporations, government agencies, non-profit organizations, libraries, and schools. Ideal client projects fit within one of the following categories:
Improving or repairing an existing information or communication process;
Improving or repairing an existing product or service;
Evaluating service design, such as processes for walk-in customers at service desks.
To propose a project for your company or organization, please complete this very brief form as soon as possible, and no later than July 31, 2017.
If your project proposal appears to be a good fit, a member of the SI 501 teaching team will contact you to develop and refine your project scope during the summer. Please feel free to email with any questions you may have, and share this email widely with others who might be interested. We have provided additional information below, which may be useful for sharing.
Thank you!
Kentaro Toyama (faculty), Melissa Chalmers (staff)
SI 501: Contextual Inquiry and Consulting Foundations
University of Michigan School of Information
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About SI 501, Contextual Inquiry and Consulting Foundations:
This master’s degree level course provides professional training and skill-building in user-centered design via the basic principles of an established process known as “contextual inquiry.” In their capacity as consultants, faculty-coached student teams collect data related to your client project through meetings and interviews with project stakeholders, observations of work practices and information system usage, and examination of artifacts (e.g. physical workspaces, databases, social media accounts, etc.). The student teams then synthesize and analyze this qualitative data, and produce formal reports through which they present their analyses and recommendations for future action. (Student teams will not be expected to implement solutions as a part of this course, though many will be available the following summer for internships.)
Clients should meet the following criteria:
Have a product, service, information process, or communication process already in place that needs repair or improvement.
Be able to provide at least five relevant people who would be willing to be interviewed and observed in person for 60-90 minutes by the student team in September-November, 2017.
Are within 50 miles of Ann Arbor (preference is given to local projects).
Can accommodate the timeline below.
Timeline for Fall 2017 clients:
Summer 2017: client proposal and refinement of parameters with SI 501 teaching staff
September/October 2017: initial meeting, interviews and observations
November 2017: feedback and follow-up interviews
December 2017: final report and presentation
Problems that affect organizational and communication efficiency and productivity are a good match for student teams:
“We have channels for distributing information to our constituents, but the right information isn’t always shared.”
“We keep adding staff to our service desk, but the lines haven’t gone down.”
“We have a database, but we aren’t putting in or taking out the information that we need.”
“A patron ordered a book, and they got it -- but it took weeks to get it to them.”
Examples of past projects:
Reviewing a health clinic's telephone queue and voicemail system, with attention to why call abandonment rates are so high.
Investigating how an online job-matching company could improve retention and engagement of its resume-posting users.
Exploring how a public library's process to acquire and weed materials among its three branches could be integrated and streamlined.
Understanding the bottlenecks of a non-profit organizations complex reporting requirements, and how to relieve them.
Client testimonials:
A private company: “The team did a good job learning about the context of our company and the challenge we were having, which ultimately allowed them to make recommendations that were relevant and helpful for us.”
An academic library: “The team did a great job! I appreciate the final report immensely, and really appreciated the production of tangible deliverables I can use.”
A university service department: “They understood our complex challenges, and came up with some good ideas for us to tackle to improve our communications and relationships with our customers.”
A non-profit organization: “We have some complex systems very specific to our industry that usually take people a while to catch on to but the students really picked things up quickly.”
About UMSI: The University of Michigan School of Information was chartered in 1996 as a new school within the University with the mission to conduct research in, and to teach about, topics at the intersection of people, information, and technology; its roots trace back to 1926 as a library science department. Our award-winning faculty have training in computer science, library science, business, psychology, economics, education, history, and other fields, and they investigate topics ranging from digitization of archival documents to relationships on social media, from data analysis using machine intelligence to the economics of information. The school comprises about 50 faculty, 50 staff, 60 PhD students, 400 professional master’s degree students and 150 bachelor’s degree students.