News

Sprint Event to Modernize the UAF Student Experience

March 2, 2020

Student Leadership Conference organizers talk to Team Intel about their solution to specific needs on providing a modern UAF during the Nook Tank event. Photo by Peter Webley.
Student Leadership Conference organizers talk to Team Intel about their solution to specific needs on providing a modern UAF during the Nook Tank event. Photo by Peter Webley.

Nook Tank, a UAF-themed design thinking and pitch content exercise, was held as part of the UAF Student Leadership Conference. The sprint event focused on a UAF Strategic Planning Goal: Modernize the student experience.

This February sprint event gave the conference attendees the experience of an innovation sprint where they had to think outside the box, work with ideas from others to build a final solution, and develop a minimum viable product to pitch to the end user — the UAF student.

OIPC faculty ambassador Peter Webley worked with conference attendees on ideation, customer discovery, and the application of design thinking processes.

Members of the conference organizing team were interviewed to represent the end-user of the proposed solutions. Through this discovery process, the teams figured out if they were building a product that a student would want or a must-have. It provided them with direct feedback and the ability to adapt and pivot their ideas to build a MVP for implementation. This Nook Tank followed on from the event held in the fall as part of Alaska Startup Week.