User Experience Research
Ask (interviews):
The major spaces I was looking to learn about was the place where people said they do the most work and where they find themselves when they have to get something done. With this in mind I came up with the following questions:
What is your name?
Where do you work/go to school?
How many hours a day are you at your desk?
Where is the majority of your work done (on the computer or with physical paper)?
What is your preferred method of productivity?
Does this effect what your desk space looks like?
Why have you chose this space over other options on the market?
How organized do you think you are when no one is watching?
How would you describe your organization habits?
Do you currently use any organziation products?
If so, how do you utilize those and do they increase satisfaction?
Are you excited to work at your desk or is there somewhere else you prefer working?
Why?
Do you think organization of that space plays into your emotions regarding work?
Have you ever chosen the desk you use or has it always been given to you?
What do you look for in a desk?
How reluctant are you to buy a product you don’t know you need?
My first interview was with my friends roommate Ryan, who I know spends a lot of time at his desk and thus I thought he would be a good person to interview as I was confident he would have some insight into organization. This turned out to not necessarily be the case as it was the least organized desks I had seen in my interviews, but this also meant he would provide some of the best insight out of all the interviews.
He was the most talkative of all of the people answering all of my questions with long answers and descriptions. Even though he was telling me a lot it didn’t feel genuine and that he was trying to give me exactly what he thought I wanted so I decided to give him a few curve balls. First I had him imagine the last time he was using his desk and to describe the entire event to me. While doing this he slipped up and shared with me his real issue, not having enough space to work and have his peripherals. He initially had the ingenious idea to convert a door into a desk by suspending it between two dressers, however even with this new work space he was still lacking. The rest of the interview went on without a hitch talking about his uses and what he would like to see out of his desk space and after I bought him a burrito for his time.
Next I wanted to talk to someone who was on the other side of the spectrum, a girl who doesn’t use her desk a lot and is the most organized of all of the interviews I did. This was an interesting change from the first interview as she was not as talkative because she used her work spaces hours less a day than Ryan did. This made me realize that what I think of when thinking of work spaces is a place where people do homework and computer work in their homes or apartments but with being on a college campus this wasn’t really a requirement. She describe how the majority of the time she was in the library studying rather than in her room and what she used her desk space for more than anything was light reading and leaving things on and in as a cabinet.
When she does use this space for homework she needs everything to be in its place or it adds a lot of stress to her experience and lowers her productivity greatly. Of all my interviews it felt as though what she had to say was the most honest and this was easy because it wasn’t somewhere where she spent a lot of time and therefor she didn’t feel the need to embellish what she had to impress at all. This was nice for this reason however it did lead to the least informative data as there wasn't many problems she didn’t already have products or methods to overcome. The one area where she did find issue was always having to run her laptop charging cable behind her desk in order to plug it in and then worry about unplugging and bringing it with her for the day.
Finally I interviewed my neighbor Andrew, a sales manager for a biomedical products firm. I really enjoyed this interview because since he works from home he’s in this office for 8 hours a day at least and his work in this area determines how productive and effective he is.
It was crazy to see how many phones he had and how much that mattered to his job and how much space it took up on his desk. He enjoyed the conversation and answered all of my questions to the best of his ability until I asked him if he was excited to use his work space or if he felt there was something lacking and his answer didn’t instill any confidence as he talked about how it was “pretty good” and that he “can’t complain” but these didn’t sit well with me and I wanted to know what he was concerned about. After prying he told me it was because of all the clutter that he felt embarrassed to have someone see his desk and he wishes there was a more convenient place to set things like towels or headphone pieces.
Observe (part 1):
I went to a few of my friends houses and had them show me their desks without cleaning or fixing anything. Almost everyone was extremely apprehensive to this and of all the people I asked only 2 (and myself) let me in to actually observe their desks and how they used it. First I’ll share Alex’s, he’s a power user doing mostly gaming with an average of 40 hours a week at his desk.
Next we will look at my friend Hunters desk, he says that between homework and games he spends about 30 hours a week here and it was cleaned 3 days ago so it has some use on it.
Finally we will look at Parker’s desk, a high school student who spends about 25 hours at his desk any given week and due to limited depth he has expressed a desire to have a better place to keep his things when not using them.
All these spaces are super high usage and all have different issues but one thing that has remained constant is the desire for more space and a separation between work things and fun things because one can be distracting to the other.
Observe (part 2) Market Survey:
Target was the first store I visited to see what they had on any kind of desk management or work space organization. I didn’t happen across many actual desks here but there was a lot of general storage options that could be used in the work space application however nothing was as specialized as I was hoping so in target there seems to be a lack of solutions for this problem.
Next I visited my local Office, which was starting to get into the things I was looking for. They had a lot more variety in terms of actual desks to pick from but the one thing I did notice was how expensive they were to comparable ones found online.
Beyond desks I wanted to see what kinds of products they had in terms of organization and clearing desktop clutter and they had more options like the file organizer seen below.
Things like this would help clear up a lot of the issues seen in the interviews and could be very helpful.
Finally I checked out what was up on Amazon. Amazon by far had the most options in terms or organization products which is to be expected from such a company.
They had stock of many products that took care of almost all of the problem statements found in my research.
Unpacking:
I realized about halfway through this exercise that I didn’t have nearly enough post-it notes so I tried to keep it to the most important things. In green I wrote the things that people identified as a problem (or I saw to be a problem) and in purple were all of the known solutions that exist in the market or in their lives. In doing it this way it gave me a good contrast between what they knew was out there so I could stay away from those things or expand on them and the problems they had that they didn’t have any solution to.
Major Insights:
- People don’t like talking about their desk if it’s messy in their eyes (interview)
- Desk space is almost as private as bedroom space to many people (interview)
- Desk surface area is a big factor in people’s satisfaction (interview)
- When people use their desk often inevitably clutter starts to add up (interview)
- The fewer things on the desk the happier people are (interview)
- When the desk is in the bedroom people get upset with the desk taking up too much space (interview)
- People who spend a lot of time at desks are reluctant to buy existing organization products. (Unpacking)
- People who have super clean desks either don’t use them or lie that they didn’t clean it (observation)
- People who spend the most time at their desks are the most reluctant to talk about their needs (interview/unpacking)
- Food at desks is something most people do and few have good systems for this (observation)
Problem Statements:
- Desk users need a way to clear clutter from the desk because this leads to more stress, higher anxiety, and less productivity.
- Alex needs a way to store his devices he isn’t using because he can’t have anything he isn’t using on his desk.
- Business professionals need a way to deal with paperwork and documents that end up on their desks because this can lead to things becoming lost or damaged.
Timeline: I plan to do my interviewing on Friday. I will observe on Friday as well. My market survey will be done on Saturday. I will do review on Sunday when I will also come up with my most important takeaways and problems statements.