The Work Order Kiosk provides an efficient way to report maintenance or facilities issues in college campus buildings. Consisting of a tablet that can be mounted on the wall, the kiosk is designed to help students and faculty quickly report issues while providing written documentation for maintenance staff.
2020 Google Design Challenge
1 week
User researcher, UX designer
Adobe Illustrator, Miro
Individual project
How might we create a system for reporting maintenance issues in campus buildings that is streamlined, simple, and efficient for both students and faculty reporting as well as those taking action on the issues?
At the University of Washington, each campus building is home to one or more departments. The main office for each department is responsible for communicating building maintenance needs to the to the university facilities department. The main office consists of the front desk receptionist, building manager, and other administrative personnel. I decided to focus on Sieg Hall. Home to two departments, there are four floors consisting of classrooms, computer labs, and faculty offices. I chose to focus on one building because each building has separate leadership and processes for communicating maintenance needs.
Students, staff, and faculty who are regulars in Sieg; Front desk staffers and maintenance team in Sieg
User interviews, ideation, paper prototypes, usability tests, high fidelity prototypes
I conducted interviews with 3 undergrad students and 1 front desk receptionist. I chose these users to understand the experiences of both those who report maintenance needs and those who respond.
From the four interviews, I gained the following insights.
| Students are unsure of how to report maintenance issues; there is no clear process to report issues. | Students do not want to go out of their way to report an issue. | Students go to the front desk/main office for general communication needs. | Communication regarding maintenance and building issues are funneled through the building manager. | It is important for maintenance to catalog and have written documentation of issues and reports. |
I explored possible solutions through an ideation round with the insights in mind.
Pros: prominent and distinct, usable by people from other departments Cons: more physical resources required, users have to seek out the kiosk
Pros: users don't have to get out of their seats, doesn't require new resources Cons: users have to download another app, not everyone has accessed to a smartphone, might be distracting to have to pull out phone
Ultimately, I decided to further iterate on the kiosk idea because I felt that students would not report issues if doing so required pulling out their phone and downloading an app. Kiosks located around the building would provide an accessible way to report maintenance issues.
To explore the kiosk idea, I created paper prototypes highlighting two task flows.
Task 1 requires reporting a wobbly whiteboard table in the design lab. Whiteboard tables are ubiquitous in Sieg Hall since most of the classrooms are used for design-related classes, which focus on collaboration and the design process.
Task 2 requires reporting that the elevator is broken again. Elevators are often broken in the older Sieg Hall. A barrier for wheelchair access, a broken elevator is an important maintenance issue.
In the “About” panel, I wanted to motivate students to report issues through a nudge about community engagement and a reminder about the minimal time needed to report. I also included a progress bar so students can feel the brevity of the task.
I conducted four usability tests with students who frequent Sieg Hall. Testing the paper prototypes allowed me to see the concept in action and revealed successes and shortcomings.
| Students are more motivated to complete the report when they notice the progress bar shows minimal sections. | Students are confused when the quick report jumps to the review screen. | It is unclear how to edit a quick report. | Students assume they can start typing right away on screens such as the location step. | Students would like at least a kiosk per floor. |
The findings from the usability tests motivated the following adjustments.
For the design of the screens, I followed Material Design standards for UI features such as buttons and colors. I also continued a minimalistic design strategy to meet users' desires. Dark grey boxes represent text that is for review only and not for editing.
Overall, the kiosk would be a tablet that is mounted on a wall, tilted at an upward angle. An ergonomic tilt is important so that the kiosk is similar to typing on a keyboard or typing on a phone or tablet. There would be at least one kiosk per floor, and/or located in major room locations.
On the maintenance end, the reports will include a timestamp. From the user interviews, timestamps would allow the maintenance team to “catalog how many people [an issue is] affecting and how long the issue has been in place.” The maintenance team can then triage issues and flag those that need to be addressed immediately, such as a broken elevator.
To implement the kiosks, the team would have to collaborate with the building manager/front office, maintenance team, and university administration. The team must include at a minimum a program manager to communicate with the clients, a software developer to develop the software for the kiosk, and a UX researcher and designer to continue iterating on the concept.
In the future, I would like to conduct more user research to understand the problem space more in depth, especially on the maintenance end. As I was only able to interview the front desk receptionist, the experience of the building manager and janitors would also be important and valuable. Generally, I would also want to more closely evaluate the desirability, functionality, and usability of the kiosk system as a whole for both user groups. It is also essential that the kiosks are accessible to all users in terms of both digital and physical design. The kiosks can be expanded to multiple buildings across campus as well.
