How I interviewed users in the laundry room

How does one go about talking to his fellow CO-OP shareholders? By camping out in the laundry room, talk to strangers and try not to be creepy.

There’s a user experience practice called gorilla testing. Its commonly used to test a digital product prototype to unbiased users in cafes. The main ideas is to get raw feedback on your product. Taking this method in a different direction did what anyone else would do in a laundry room, get laundry done. Questioned shareholders about the current website. In full disclosure there is some bias with those I interviewed. Most interviewees had experience with the website, which is what I wanted of course. Getting honest feedback on a product most of them have had to use is the goal.

I wanted to find a place where shareholders would be relaxed and not too focused on a task where a conversation would be intrusive. Being intrusive would put them on edge and create a defensive atmosphere.

Other options available to me were the Community room or Lobby.

Our Community Room looks nothing like this. But we do have a pool table.

The laundry room won because it’s a place where people seemed more comfortable gossiping while in-between loads of clothing. The community room was rarely used by most of the shareholders but everyone used the laundry room.

So I camped out with a load of laundry and my laptop. As friendly faces entered, I struck up conversations asking about their use of the site.

Here are the questions I asked:

1. Did you know that the building had a website?
   (Surprisingly some did not.)
2. How did you know the site existed?
3. How many times have you gone to the site?
   (I’m interested in how often a user might be expecting the site to be updated.)
4. Did you find what you were looking for? How?
5. What devices did you use to access the website.
6. Has anyone asked you about becoming a shareholder? If so what do you tell them? How do you direct other to apply for the building?

Recording the interviews wasn’t feasible with the noise and needing the interviewees to sign waivers. So as they spoke I typed notes, telling them of my intention of re-doing the current site. Responses were mostly good natured, even the one person that never went on the internet because…

“They’ll know who you are.”
(cue scary drama movie soundtrack). Have I told you that I fear my neighbors?

From the results of the interviews I learned that many were interested in official notes or minutes from board member meetings. Others wanted to know about common building maintenance issues. The downside was that the site was not updated regularly so information became old, leading to a drop in users. Notice no one really complained about the look of the site. People have issues finding what they wanted at first but then repeated the same patterns to find that same information. They became acclimated to the information architecture.

So this has lead me to my next steps.

1. The look and feel of the site might be antiquated. but shareholders don’t seem to care. How the sites aesthetics are affecting potential shareholders in applying to the building, needs to be investigated.
2. With the re-design there needs to be attention brought to meeting minutes and when they are available. And look into who created and uploaded the past meeting minutes.

From these next steps I’ll do card sorting. Even though current users are finding their way around, its because they’ve become . Though I could be wrong. One never knows until they try.