Master Design Document
Roosevelt Critique
A. Knowledge
1. Focus
2. Understand
2.1 Expertise
2.2 Learners
2.3 Personas
User Profiles
Overview
To better understand the challenges and opportunities of the organization, we conducted
a series of customer profile interviews about learners’ and instructors’ gains, tasks, and
pains. We then synthesized this information into a set of personas representing each of
the primary customer segments for whom we are designing.
Interviewees
In order to recruit our interviewees, we contacted our contact lead, Brenna
Conway, for possible contacts in the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network. She
gave us the president’s emails of the chapter at Northwestern. From there, we
contacted the presidents and they gave us further contacts of general chapter
members. We also attended one of their chapter meetings to conduct a few
interviews. We were persistent in our time limited goal in order to get the
information we needed.
We interviewed … <describe the people you interviewed, you could use a table like that
below)
Interviewee
Who
Details
1
Brian Young
Brian Young is a junior and the President of the
Roosevelt Institute Campus Network at Northwestern
University.
20 minute phone interview,
Oct. 2
2 Max Hoffman
Max Hoffman is A senior at Northwestern University. He 20 minute in-person
interview, Oct 1
is currently the President of the Roosevelt Chapter at
Northwestern. He works, for the most part, directly with
Brenna and also helps guide the Northwestern Chapter.
3 Alan Smith
Alan Smith is Roosevelt director of network initiatives, in 15 minute phone interview,
Oct 3
charge of figuring out how to make chapters work
effectively together.
4 Dominic
Russell
Dominic Russell is a member of the Roosevelt
Northwestern chapter.
15 minute phone
interview, Oct 4
Transcripts / notes of our interviews are located in the appendix after the Team
Charter.
Analysis
Network Director
Network directors, such as interviewees Alan Smith, are responsible for figuring
out how to make all 120 chapters work effectively together.
Pain Severity (ExtremeModerate)
Bringing someone new in and
getting them up to date
Finding the most recent
version of policy to edit
Unclear where one
job ends and the
next begins.
Clarity of what each
person is asked to
do in critique
process.
Assigning
tasks to editors
Gain Relevance (Extreme->Moderate)
Critiques Crowd Sourced
Allowing entire
network to access
and edit policies
Mandate that
everyone
participate
Insight: Network directors would like to see the guide separated into two main parts:
critiquing the format/writing and the idea itself. The critiquing process needs to have a
clear way to see the iterations and edits of a document and who provided them.
A few questions: Who can see the documents? How can you differentiate between open
users giving feedback and those asked to give feedback?
Chapter Leads
Chapter leads, such as interviewees Max Hoffman and Brian Young, are in charge of
fostering the creation of policies, ensuring the critiquing process takes place, and
submitting the policies by the deadline.
Job Importance (Important-Less Important)
Submit policies by deadline
Work with policy makers to
create/change policy
Critique back and forth with staff
member about polices
Research on issue
Send to network for edits
Edit for final draft
Write first draft
Pain Severity (ExtremeModerate)
Different people are at different
motivation levels
Policy summation process.
(application deadline, where to
sumbit)
No grading rubric
Communication with
staff editor before
and after summation
Formating of
policies not
streamlined
Groups are
hard to work
with (timing,
disagreements,
etc)
Gain Relevance (Extreme->Moderate)
To write/change real
policy(s) in the United States
Grading rubric for peers to
help edit before summiting
policies to staff for critiquing
Better
collaboration
Easier summation
process
Staff involvement
in critique process
Longer
communication
timeline
Insight: It is clear that one of the most frustrating areas for chapter leads is that there
isn’t a clear grading rubric that chapters have to look at when writing their polices. This
would be helpful both for the policy writers and for the peers that could help to critique
their peer’s policies before turning them into staff, so the critiquing process between
students and staff is smoother and easier. In addition, Roosevelt uses many systems to try
and improve their work, however none of them are used efficiently or in an organized
way. They desperately need a cloud-based real-time editing system. More importantly,
there needs to be an initiative and strategy in how to get people to commit to the new
critiquing system.
Members
Members of the Roosevelt Campus Institute at Northwestern, such as interviewee
Dominic Russell, are responsible for attending meetings and submitting or contributing to
the policy creations.
Pain Severity (ExtremeModerate)
Quality of Policy Submissions
Communication
issues
Emails not
responded to
Task
assignments
Gain Relevance (Extreme->Moderate)
Increased quality of
submissions
Time saved
Team cohesion
Policies
submitted
used by real
politicians,
etc.
Insight: Since Interviewee and Member Dominic Russell does not have experience in
submitting a critique for editing, he was only able to speak from his experience as a
student member of the Roosevelt network. The most important thing that Dominic
highlights is improving the communication since many emails go unnoticed. It would be
beneficial if we would condense these critique materials in our guide, which will not only
streamline, but also standardize the critique process.
Summary: There are a few overlapping gains that these Roosevelt Institute
members are looking for in our product. They would appreciate a system that
assigns and collects the work by crowdsourcing the editing assignments. This
includes coordinating editors and assigning work. The overarching problem is that
their current system is inefficient and the critiquing burden often piles up on a
small portion of people. We need to create a solution and technology that both
address high level critiquing and doing low level grammar editing.
1.1 Existing Solutions
2. Define Goals & Assessments
3. Conceive
3.1 Stakeholder map
4.
5.
6.
7.
3.2 Design argument
3.3 Blueprints
Build
Test
References
Appendices
TEAM CHARTER
Team Member Names
Member 1
Member 2
Member 3
Member 4
Member 5
Member 6
Team Member Names
Member 1
Member 2
Member 3
Member 4
Contact Information
(e-mail, cell, Facebook, etc.)
Ellenstello2017@u.northwestern.edu 414828-3582
Ericshalek2016@u.northwestern.edu 201675-6067
Youngeunkim2016@u.northwestern.edu
512-294-0465
Chelseasoderholm2016@u.northwestern.edu
608-338-9404
Clairegoodrich2016@u.northwestern.edu
Contact 6
Strengths related to
teamwork and the team’s
assigned task.
Efficient
Organized
Initiating
Attention to Small Details
Preferred Contact
Method / Limitations
(ex. no calls after…)
FB Group Chat
FB Group Chat
FB Group Chat
FB Group Chat
FB Group Chat
Pref 6
Weaknesses related to
teamwork and the team’s
assigned task.
Frustrated if unproductive
Rushing through things
Sometimes Overpowering
Strict Time Management (Busy
Schedule)
Member 5
Member 6
Previous Consulting
Experience
Strength 6
Technology/Communication
Weakness 6
1. What are your team’s goals for the collaboration?
These should relate to the team’s performance on the project as well as the processes
that the team will follow to complete the project. What are your team’s expectations
regarding the quality and timeliness of the team’s work?
Great quality; On-time
2. Who is responsible for each activity? What roles will each member have?
Don’t forget to include logistical tasks, such as arranging meetings, preparing agendas
and meeting minutes, and team process roles, such as questioning (devil’s advocate),
ensuring that everyone’s opinion is heard, etc.
All responsibilities will be rotating around the team and will be fluid. Not one person will
be in charge of a
3. What is your timetable for activities?
(Due dates, meetings, milestones, deliverables from individuals, if appropriate)
All activities are due 24 hrs before the syllabus due date to the team for review unless
otherwise stated.
4. What are your team’s expectations regarding meeting attendance (being on
time, leaving early, missing meetings, etc.)?
All members are expected to attend all meetings. If there are conflicts email the group
before. The group will assign a portion of the assignment during the meeting.
5. What constitutes an acceptable excuse for missing a meeting or a deadline?
What types of excuses will not be considered acceptable?
Acceptable excuse for missing a meeting/deadline is job/internship recruitment, athletics,
family and health.
6. What process will team members follow if they have an emergency and cannot
attend a team meeting or complete their individual work promised to the team
(deliverable)?
Team members should send an email/fb chat to the team in case of emergency and
complete individual work unless another team member agrees to take on the task.
7. What are your team’s expectations regarding the quality of team members’
preparation for team meetings and the quality of the deliverables that members
bring to the team?
Team members should come to meetings prepared with all assigned deliverables
completed.
8. What are your team’s expectations regarding team members’ ideas, interactions
with the team, cooperation, attitudes, and anything else regarding team-member
contributions?
All team members are expected to speak up about every question/discussion. Even if it
means just saying “I agree.”
9. What methods will be used to keep the team on track?
How will your team ensure that members contribute as expected to the team and that the
team performs as expected? How will your team reward members who do well and
manage members whose performance is below expectations?
Prepared Agenda for each meeting. Team members will be rewarded by great team
member evaluation. Below expectation performance will be communicated right away
and if there is no improvement, it will reflect on the team member evaluation.
INTERVIEW NOTES
Matt Hoffman Interview
1.) What is your crtiquing experience for roosevelt? For example, when you turn in your
steps what is your process for it?
- Max: We work through and operate internally with policies. Then from there, those who
decide to summit their policies summit by the deadline given by national. They
typically give us a deadline, but there have been some issues with the deadline for
applications in the past, so like some sort of portal where we could summit those and
it’s very clear would be really helpful. Yeah, so then from there it kind of breaks off
into individual communication between people who have summited their policies, or
peoples whose policies are being considered I should say. So then the National people
kind of interact with those people kind of one on one. I don’t know if it would be more
beneficial if they had it in more of a group format where people kind of sit down and
see how each others polices are being critiqued, but it’s pretty much from what i’ve
seen individual communication.
- Me: So the people critique the policies aren’t students?
- Max: No they are people from regional slash nationals.
- Me: Okay. Do you think that it is kind of frustrating how much you have to go back and
forth with these people for the critique process?
- Max: Um I think it would be help if before we summit our polices, if we establish some
face contact with the person. Maybe if someone were responsible for each chapter
instead of having multiple people. Um, that way there is some sort of clear contact point
which there sort of is but not really like I know I always talk to Brenna. Um, but maybe
to get face time before we summit our polices in order to see who the person is and
people can ask them questions if they need to and then continue through email.
2.) What are your gains are you trying to achieve? What do you hope the critiquing
process would look like?
- Max: I think that initially in those beginning stages the critiquing could be done by
peers but the peers would need to be critiquing in line with the expectations. So maybe,
I mean it’s like a lot of work for nationals to have to deal with a lot of these peoples
polices, um if they could maybe make some sort of a rubric and distribute that to the
clubs and we could hand that out to people as we have like a peer editing session.
- Me: So they can be train at editing the polices in the way nationals will later?
- Max: Yeah, so they know what needs to improve, what’s lacking, what looks good,
instead of saying like oh I critiqued my own and I am looking at this person’s and it’s
different so I think this should change you know. So I think like a rubric for peer editing
would help and then for nationals like some sort of portal like canvas of something for
like policy summation where you kind of have one place where you check. It like one
method of communication and it’s easy to post back and forth. I think that would be
really helpful too so you can like see each others mark up and things like that.
3.) What pains do you experience with critiquing? What is just extremely frustrating to
you?
-Max: I think just having that singular communication with a single individual maybe just
kind of centralizing the experience, I think that could be kind of helpful. that way people
are comfortable with their contact in advance and everyone is familiar with their contact
from a feedback perspective then they can go through that process right off the bat.
Instead of sort of submitting and them just seeing their policy for the first time and then
having to get their first feedback from just then from their perspective. So maybe to get
that conversation going earlier, so then they have that idea of what the policy should look
like in its fundamental form and then seeing that change as it goes through the critiquing
process. So basically just a longer communication timeline.
-Me: So do you think it would be beneficial to your guys if your peers help critique your
policies before turning them into nationals, if they were trained from the grading rubrics
on how to edit the policies and what nationals is going to be looking for?
-Max: It would really depend on how familiar people are with nationals expectations
because nationals is responsible for making that call on whose polices get published in
the journal. Um and I think that is why historically it has been helpful to get that feedback
from the staff members who have been interacting because they are the ones who kind of
know what nationals is looking for in the end. So I don’t think we should lose them in
that process, but I think that if we start with peers and then make the policies better
between us and then summit it to nationals for critiquing it would be less of a pain and
easier to go back and forth for the critiquing process. Yeah I think that would be great.
4.) Is there anything else I should know or that you want me to know about the now or
future critiquing system?
-Max: Um, I think that pretty much covers it. It’s pretty simple right now. Yeah.
-Me: Okay great sounds good.
Alan Smith Interview
What do you do as the director of network initiatives?
There are 120 chapter of students, and I figure out how to make those chapters work
effectively together so that the output is greater than parts. I want to take the brilliant
thinking going on and have it sparking off itself instead of a happening in a vacuum.
Basically I want the network to share more with itself and to push students to follow
through with their ideas.
What are the gains you hope to achieve from a critique guide?
Since you have different people who critique, you need to integrate them all into the
process. You have the format and writing part of the critique and then the critique of the
idea itself which needs to be reviewed by an expert. So far it’s unclear where one job
starts and the other ends. It would be nice to be able to say to an editor what questions
they need to query the document with. It would also be nice to have their answers
permanently associated with the document to be able to look back on iterations of change
from different people across time on one document. I’m not sure if all users (students and
editors) should be able to see the document and its edits, or only the editors. Maybe just
all logged in users. I’m really not sure.
What jobs do you do to achieve those gains?
So there’s the student role of idea generation. Then there are two editor roles. And these
two roles don’t have to only be two people. First there’s the idea critique. That person
would need to be able to make comments and add further readings for the document. The
second editor role needs to critique the format for readability and logic. Then there’s a
final sign off role, an editor in chief that provides a final ok.
What are some pains that you currently experience?
One pain is the process of constantly trying to find the most recent version of a document
being edited. Right now we’re using Dropbox and everyone has to upload and download
versions. Right now we don’t have a sense of which version is most recent and which
updates have been okayed by everyone. What are the different iterations? How do you
bring in someone new and get them up to date? What are we asking each editor to do?
Some check for spelling when we want them to look for content. We need better clarity
on what we’re asking from each person reading it.
Is there anything else you’d like to see in a new critique guide?
It would be interesting to have critiques that could be crowdsourced by the masses. The
entire network as students has the capacity to read ideas and offer suggestions. They
don’t have to be as stringent as edits. Then they could also connect people with similar
ideas or interests. Another big question to consider is how do you differentiate between
students, open editors, and general feedback and experts and the two main editor roles?
Brian Young Interview
Brian Young is a junior and the President of the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network at
Northwestern University.
Current editing process explained by Brian Young
The policies are written by an individual, pairs, or groups. While they are being
written, the policies are edited and redrafted by whoever owns the policies. Typically, the
editing is done faster and easier when it is done by an individually written policy as
opposed to a group (time management).
After the policies are written, they are edited usually sent out to a network of
people (Roo Staff, local policy makers, congressmen, etc.) who works with the students
to make it into the appropriate level of writing.
Comments about the hypothetical Loft critique system by Brian Young
 The big problem is that there isn’t a cloud-based real-time editing system we can
use (EX. Google doc programmed in Loft or something like that) If there isn’t
going to be a technical program like that, it doesn’t seem very useful
 With any initiative, there needs to be a strategy of how to get people to use it.
Historically that hasn’t been done in the past.
 Roo has a lot of systems that they “use.” We almost use everything with no
organization
Gains
 To write/change real policy(s) in the United States
Jobs





Research on issue
Write the first draft
Send to network for edits
Edit for final draft
Work with policy makers to create/change policy
Pains
 Groups are hard to work with (timing, disagreements, etc)
 Formatting of policies
 Different people are at different motivation levels