Project Brief

Week 2 : September 14–20

Who is your audience?

• User Group one: Student Volunteers for UPMC
• User Group two: Other Volunteers for UPMC

Are they looking for health information for themselves or are they the individuals who disseminate health information?

• User Group one: disseminate health information
• User Group two: disseminate health information

What are the social and cultural characteristics of your intended audience that might influence how they interact with your product or service?

• User Group one: They have a good work ethic; they are passionate about helping people; they are curious about learning medical knowledge.
• User Group two: They have a lot of free-time; they are passionate about helping people.

Tell us about the problem through the lenses of the audience.

Please show by example how you have learned about empathy, bias, the role of inclusive design, and how this has helped you arrive at your idea.

I talked to my friend X.D, a university-student volunteer at UPMC. She told me a lot of undergraduate students are required to do volunteer work if they want to apply for medical school.

She realized that the hospitals sometimes neglect volunteers. UPMC gave volunteers basic training in the beginning, but did not provide clear instructions on a regular basis when volunteers started working. Volunteers did standard jobs, such as greeting patients at the front door of the hospital, and they wanted to participate in a larger range of roles.

She had a few interactions with people with vision impairment, and thought volunteers might be able to help those patients to navigate through the hospitals.

In addition, she told me a lot of retired seniors in Pittsburgh are doing volunteer work in UPMC, because they have a lot of free time, and the seniors face similar problems to the students.

Include a written description of the three potential design research probes and methods that you might design and implement. Are there a few examples of completed methods/probes that have inspired your thinking?

1. Zoom interviews with Both user group one and two: Our group is planning to interview at least five volunteers and UPMC to have a better understanding of the problem.
2. Direct interviews with stakeholders in UPMC shadyside: Since the volunteers are aimed at helping patients, nurses, and doctors, it is important to look at a wide range of the stakeholders at UPMC, besides just the volunteers. Our group does not want to push design to the audience, we want them to help lead us.
3. Google survey for both user group one and two: A google survey is a good way to collect data from a large number of people, beside getting interviews with specific people. We will have to work on distributing the survey though, as it may be less likely to reach some stakeholder groups like senior volunteers.

These are challenging times — help us understand the barriers, challenges, and goals you hope to achieve with this project.

• Goal: Our team hopes to create a good communication channel for all stakeholders. We are not sure what the medium will be at this point.
• Challenges: It is very hard for us to connect with people during this hard-time. Not only are all people staying home, but people also are more protective and stressed due to Covid-19, so they might not want to talk to us. We want to make sure our interviews do not disturb or make people uncomfortable. For instance, we need to carefully structure our interviews with people with visual impairment, as we do not want them to feel like we are looking down on them.