InsideOut Literary Arts

SI 501 - Contextual Inquiry and Consulting

Throughout the semester, my team and I consulted with a local creative arts non-profit called InsideOut Literary Arts. InsideOut consists of a team of 10 employees who are constantly collaborating on projects that help share the passion slam poetry with students in the Detroit area.

I was able to meet with InsideOut's team and use the contextual inquiry process to better understand their workflow and collaboration process throughout the organization. Data was collected through multiple in-person interviews and contextual inquiry observations with several InsideOut team members. In order to better reveal core insights about the collaboration process, the interviews were further analyzed by creating an affinity wall

Finally, a detailed analysis was delivered on how InsideOut could improve its collaborative process by investing in team-based tools like Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint, and Office 365, including tips on how the system could be implemented with InsideOut’s needs in mind.

Problem Statement

InsideOut is looking to streamline the way they collaborate and manage internal documents and files while still keeping costs low, especially as a non-profit organization. Currently, the team uses the Google Suites to draft grant documents and other files that require collaboration, the Microsoft Office Suite to develop documents that require specific features such as formatting and data analysis, Dropbox to store final versions, and an on-premise server to store archives and larger files such as photos and videos. Further, there is currently no standard file saving process and folder hierarchy, creating some confusion and inefficiencies when it comes to version control and file retrieval.

Interviews

Six out of nine InsideOut employees were interviewed and observed over a period of over three days across a wide range of roles within the organization, including interviews with the both the executive and associate directors, the operations coordinator, and the school programs coordinator. Each interview was conducted with an extensive observation that allowed me to discover major pain points that may be occurring normal day-to-day activities.

Affinity Wall

To draw insights from the qualitative data collected through the interviews and observations, an affinity wall was generated to better understand the context surrounding our observations. The process begins by transcribing salient details from the interview notes onto individual post-its. These post-its are then grouped by themes. These themes are further grouped into overarching storylines, and finally, the overarching storylines are further grouped to identify core truths about the workflow and document management process at InsideOut. These core truths are ultimately what drives my final recommendations.

Recommendations

After analyzing InsideOut's collaboration process, which can sometimes include multiple data touch points for files across Dropbox, Microsoft Office, and Google Docs, I have determined that InsideOut's organization may be better suited if it adopted Office 365 across it's entire organization. Office's affordable subscription for non-profit organizations will allow InsideOut to cease utilizing DropBox for long-term storage purposes, while still allowing cloud-based document editing tools to collaborate across multiple employees. Furthermore, Microsoft's Sharepoint and Teams will allow for more tightly integrated collaboration by making files and communication more accessible.

To view the final report submitted to InsideOut at the end of the semester, click here.