PRODUCT STRATEGY + RESEARCH + DESIGN
Hub for Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Data Science
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
Investing in Data Science to solve human and societal issues
In a visionary move, the University of California Berkeley is making the fields of computing and data science foundational in its academic mission by bringing them together into a new Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS). This new division will have a new building on campus and will co-locate currently disparate departments and units.
$650M construction project | 367,000 sqft |
1,300 building users (faculty, students, research, and staff)
As a Strategist and Design Researcher, I worked closely with the client and SteerCo to craft the overall vision for the Data Science building while planning and facilitating research activities and workshops that engaged nearly 150 faculty and student stakeholders to identify teaching, learning, and research experiences and related needs.
Methods
(L) Students in an auditorium during a Data 8 (Foundations of Data Science) class.
(R) The Data Hub located at the intersection of Hearst Avenue, Arch Street, and MacFarlane Lane. (Credit: UC Berkeley)
Rendered images of The Gateway. (Credit: Weiss Manfredi)
Rendered images of The Gateway. (Credit: Weiss Manfredi)
with brightspot strategy / Buro Happold | February - August 2020
The Gateway is a collaborative space where approximately faculty, students, researchers, and staff will work together to catalyze groundbreaking research to meet society’s greatest challenges.
The facility includes convening spaces, as well as five floors of dedicated research laboratories, classrooms and auditoriums, seminar and conference rooms, offices, social kitchens, a public café, and a rooftop event space. The Gateway is set to open for the 2025-2026 academic year.
REQUIREMENTS AND PROGRAMMING WORKSHOP
We held scenarios and space programming workshops with leadership to determine priority spaces and key requirements on teaching, learning, research, and workspace to meet the division’s strategic goals.
FURTHER READING —
LEADERSHIP VISIONING INTERVIEWS & WORKSHOPS
We held sessions with leadership to understand their vision and aspirations for the future Data Science building. We used recurring themes to develop the building vision and shaped this with stakeholders.
USER EXPERIENCE & USER JOURNEY WORKSHOPS
To identify pain points, user activities, and space needs, we conducted a series of themed User Experience workshops associated with the key themes of Teaching & Learning, Research & Workspace, and Data Science Commons.
A Premier Center for Computing, Data Science, and Engineering
The Gateway brings together data science education, the School of Information, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, the Department of Statistics, the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, the Center for Computational Biology, D-Lab, and the Computational Precision Health program.
INTERNAL & EXTERNAL BENCHMARKING STUDIES
We conducted benchmarking studies of other buildings in UC Berkeley and other peer Data Science buildings in other universities. We looked at how peers organized and provided spaces to support students and faculty activities.
