Context and Background
We conducted a contextual inquiry with a representative from the Center of Learning in Action at Williams College. Having been an active part of the organization for several years, her prime responsibilities include matching students and faculty to charitable causes or means of engaging with the community, acting as a liaison between charitable organizations and students by organizing logistics and managing funding, and deciding what charities to reach out to when donations are available.
Methods
This process involved observing her perform a variety of tasks in her office on campus and asking her questions about the steps she took during her tasks. The whole conversation was audio recorded. Observing a rep from an organization that does charitable work gave us a new perspective on the needs of users from similar groups.
Results and Themes
We wanted to gather data on how people make decisions on how to give and so the tasks we observed ranged from her deciding what charity to donate funds to and reaching out to board members of that organization, to the process of helping a student decide what charitable cause to get engaged in. This was extremely insightful as we learned several key facts that we overlooked previously. In choosing which charity to donate available funds that CLIA had, the most influential factors in her decision were how local it was (close to the community in terms of proximity and social relevance), how accessible it was to for students and faculty to get involved with the work they do, ease of communication (one of the board members of the charity actually reached out to her via email previously), and its reputation. Her decision making in matching up students to charities was similar, but was also based on how relevant causes were to the student’s interests. This contextual inquiry in particular shed a lot of light in the importance of logistical aspects of giving: her initial reaching out to charities was primarily done through email but she preferred to discuss specific or important matters in-person or on the phone.