CLEANER CAMPUS
Research Findings
The goal of user research is to understand our users - their expectations, behaviors, needs, and motivations. Our research consisted of a competitive analysis of services that were related to our project and semi-structured interviews.
In our competitive analysis, we focused on the benefits and downfalls of four services that are currently used by custodial staff. These services included both task handling and task management systems. By performing a competitive analysis, our group was able to identify problem areas that existing services were not addressing.
To better understand our users, each team member also interviewed one custodian or custodial supervisor. Our interview questions mainly focused on trying to understand our user groups in context of their work place. Examples of select interview questions are“Could you tell me about what equipment you use?” and “What was your most frustrating (tedious, unpleasant, annoying, etc.) task or experience at work in the past week? Year?” By interviewing our users, we were able to identify commonalities between them and categorized these into groups.
Interview Data Categorized into Groups
After synthesizing our research, we were able to come up with a list of our major research findings that were later used to create our personas. See the following:
Custodians
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Custodians did not prefer one task over another; however, some tasks were more burdensome (e.g. taking out the trash and vacuuming).
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Custodians thought that dealing with unexpected issues (e.g. spills, messes, or accidents) was troublesome.
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Custodians mainly used cleaning supplies (e.g. rags and vacuums) and walkie talkies as tools.
Supervisors
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Supervisors followed a daily routine.
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Supervisors mainly used cleaning supplies, an online management system, their cell phone, and their pager as tools.
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Supervisors found their current task management system inefficient. They spent about 40 minutes a day assigning tasks to their staff.