I think we should focus on the UP/nb system wholistically, and how it should be improved. We are in a position really just to make recommendations to the people working on it. So lets just "apply contextual design" and then we figure everything out as we go. all we got to start doing is gathering data... wide. and we see what we get. then we consolidate it and analyze it. creating a vision of how students go about their business with a new work model we design... then we bring it back to reality, in scale and focus. thats when we figure out what kind of recommendations we should actually make, what is possible for the project.
I know i called for a really specific focus, but i think the readings of this last week have made me see that it might not be necessary. Also i think we should stay away from the interface,,, while focusing on the features...

also i think a good way to collect data would be to do some simplified solutions of thinsg that we want such as video recordings... i was thinking of videotaping one of my sections and posting them (perhaps just to youtube, and then after the midterm interviewing people abotu how they used it... (or during)... b;ab;a