U-Imagine Idea Incubator: Collegetown Collaboration Mentor

Back in my college days, I worked at a business incubator called the U-Imagine Center. It was here that I realized my passion for small business, especially for women/underrepresented groups. So as you can imagine, I was honored when Maureen Cumpstone (who runs the center) asked me to be a mentor in a student-run program with an initiative to revitalize Main Street.

Why is revitalizing Main Street important?

In more recent years, the need to unite the people of the town Collegeville and Ursinus college students has become glaringly evident. From secondary research, we learned foot traffic not only dramatically increased the value of the properties around it, but increased the revenue of the small businesses among it. Pairing up the chamber of commerce, there was a desire from both sides to create a version of Main Street that engaged both college students and young families alike, encouraging residents to move there and appeal high schoolers to look at Ursinus.

How did UX research help?

Ah yes, a complex problem, constraints of budget/resources, and access to stakeholders: the perfect storm for a UX Researcher. My role in this initiative, however, was not to perform research, but rather to teach it and its value to the students. After the students conducted enough secondary research to gain buy-in from the President of Ursinus college and the Chamber of Commerce, we began to hypothesize who our target stakeholders are.

I then facilitated a workshop about UX research, specifically persona creation. I equipped my students with an exercise that sparked their curiosity as to who our users are, what the use cases are, and how our solution could serve them. I regularly reminded them not to solution too early, and to keep ideas big at this point using the design thinking framework. The next step: conduct in-depth interviews with 3 different user groups to (in)validate/iterate on main personas for all parties involved (students, small businesses, residents of Collegeville). We had a following session where I worked with the students conducting their first in-depth interviews, how to take notes, and how to analyze/code qualitative data.

To read more about what my experience with the U-Imagine Center, check out this article in the Ursinus Magazine.