Presenter
- Marty Johnson, Georgetown University
- Adam Smeets, Dominican University
A look into the crystal ball on the future of personalized mobile experiences.
Marty: Small bite-sized data that can be subscribed to or delivered directly to me without me asking for it. In my email client, wouldn’t it be great if I could update contact info based on incoming email? Google makes recommendations to me based on my preferences and it’s a little creepy but it works well. Our students are asking for a lot of this kind of predictive functionality.
Adam: “trust capital,” how do we think about the privacy of our users? In IT, we frequently jam a bunch of data and features together, but we don’t often think about the ethical considerations of doing so. Emergency management is something we’ve been considering, i.e. “mustering.”
Q&A
- What happens when things don’t work? MARTY: depends on the thing, i.e. is it just a free salad? Probably not a problem. ADAM: unless it’s 20,000 students wanting a free salad! MARTY: sometimes getting accurate info from faculty is not easy. ADAM: we had an issue with Peoplesoft data where a few students did not have enough credits to graduate, now THAT’S a major error.
- Is there a point of diminishing returns for personalization? MARTY: if you can build a platform that’s cost-effective, then it makes sense. ADAM: what’s the goal, and how does your strategy meet that goal? You have to be able to measure this in a way that shows you’re driving value.
- Should students be required to purchase modern smartphones? MARTY: out of 1,800 admitted students, only 30 did not have a smartphone. The overall cost for subsidizing is relatively small, but provide ways for students to get them for themselves. ADAM: no, it should not be a requirement.
