Tangible Artifacts and Collaborative Networks
In sprint 4, the team started to produce artifacts as tools to enable more insightful conversations with our users. We were very excited to be able to put abstract thoughts into something more concrete and moved into sprint 5 full of enthusiasm and energy!
Sparking conversations through design
As we entered the last sprint of the semester, we pretotyped two additional ideas: collaborating with existing management platforms and assisting with the implementation process. With six pretotypes in our arsenal, we were ready to concept test and spark deeper conversations around each of our ideas. To discuss our pretotype ideas in more detail, we reached out to the facilities managers at CMU and Cornell University whom we had previously connected with and interviewed. When presented with something tangible, e were able to elicit more focused feedback and unpack the mental models that currently exist around the different insights that we had previously identified.
Building a network with the rest of “campuses” in Pittsburgh
Facilities managers are highly busy people, and in the previous sprints, we had not been very successful at receiving responses from the emails we sent out, requesting to connect. Luckily, Pittsburgh is full of universities, and at the beginning of this sprint, we decided to dedicate one morning to physically visiting facilities management offices at Duquesne University, Point Park University, Carlow University, and Chatham University. Everyone we met were very willing to help, and we were able to gather over 10 contacts that we then reached out to.
We also learned that the top three biggest users of industrial IoT in Pittsburgh were CMU, University of Pittsburgh, and, not so surprisingly, UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), the largest hospital in the city. This made us realize that the problem space we are tackling may not only apply to college campuses but also institutions with multiple big buildings in general.
Synthesizing with even deeper insights
Through concept testing with 10 facilities managers at 5 different universities, the team were able to run another round of research synthesis and draw 4 highly refined insights that we can build the rest of the project on.
- Alert should empower, not overwhelm — Facilities managers experience alert fatigue due to overwhelming numbers of alerts, including low-quality ones. Alerts should be empowering by being actionable and relevant.
- Troubleshooting can be a guessing game — Current software lack a holistic view of the different systems in facilities management, which makes troubleshooting issues more challenging.
- Sensor data reveals equipment health — Facilities managers are action oriented and monitoring sensor data feels redundant to them. However they need sensor data to diagnose real cause of equipment failure.
- Document now for better analysis later.— Facilities managers lack a proper system to document sensor data due to generations of systems and personnel, resulting in disorganized sensor data accumulation over time that prevents accurate predictive analysis.
Apart from gaining deeper insights from this research exercise, we were all thoroughly impressed by how generous and helpful most participants were. These are people who are truly passionate about what they do, and most of them mentioned how excited they were that someone (our capstone team) was interested in their craft.
Wrapping up the semester
In addition to continuing with the research, the team is also preparing for the spring presentation that is fast approaching. We are working hard on crafting the story that will be intriguing to our audience (mainly our client, inQ, but also any other folks who are interested in this domain) and encompasses everything we have learned up until this point. It is hard to imagine that we had gone through 11 weeks’ worth of research and will be moving on to design in the near future. We are very happy with where the project is right now and cannot wait to transform the outcomes of this study into a highly human-centered product in the summer.
The work and knowledge gained from this project are only intended to be applicable to the company and context involved and there is no suggestion or indication that it may be useful or applicable to others. This project was conducted for educational purposes and is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge.
