OurMichiganAvenue.org User Research: Interviews
Background
OurMichiganAvenue.org is a project aimed at developing the community in the greater Lansing area through urban development ideas. This website gives a voice to the residents and students residing in the community through a platform where ideas can be submitted and opinions heard through posts and discussion boards.
In the class “Researching User Experience,” I had the opportunity to conduct interviews with students at Michigan State University to understand and discover their likes, dislikes, and improvement ideas for the greater Lansing area. This was a two-person project where we both contributed to a proposal, reflection, and interviews with students.
Problem Statement
I wanted to understand how MSU students viewed Lansing and give them a chance to voice their opinions about developments they would like to see in East Lansing.
The Interview Process
The entirety of this project was completed in the span of a month. First, we created a proposal for the user interviews in around a week. Within the proposal, we included our objectives, mesures, and scope of study:
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Discover and understand what developments students want to see within the community to increase student engagement with the OMA website
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Build familiarity with OMA by learning what social media platforms students interact with in order to promote the website
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Understanding student involvement of urban projects in East Lansing
user profile
East Lansing is home to Michigan State University where many students from around Michigan and the US.
Participants must meet the following criteria in order to participate:
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Be at least 18 years of age
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Be a student currently enrolled in Michigan State University
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Must live in East Lansing/the Greater Lansing area
questions
Additionally, we created a procedure to ensure that every interview was conducted similarly, with minimum variation. The questions we asked the participants included the following:
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A few introductory questions to help participants to feel welcomed:
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What is your name? What is your major and what year are you?
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How long have you lived in the Lansing area?
Followed by questions pertaining to our objectives:
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Do you feel like Lansing is your home? If so, why?
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What does your ideal community look like? What type of things makes you feel connected to your community?
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What development do you want to see in Lansing so that you would enjoy the city more?
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What social media accounts do you get your information about Lansing from and what platforms are they on?
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Ex. social media? Word of mouth? Posters/bulletin boards? Emails?
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What is the most convenient or easiest way for you to get this information?
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[After looking through the website] If you have an issue or something you want to change about the Lansing community, do you feel that your voice is heard to address it? If not, how can the OMA website help to voice and express your opinions?
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Are there any features from other social media that you like and would want to see being implemented into the website?
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Examples of features: thumbs up/down, a space on the website to connect with other students, a space to see what events are taking place, ect.
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Overall, we conducted 10-15 minute interviews with 6 participants, face-to-face, and asked various questions that pertain to the objectives to further our understanding of what the students value most in the Lansing community. I conducted interviews with four of the six participants. Since I lived in a dorm, I asked residents that lived close to my room, as well as Resident Assistants. Every interview was recorded with the participant’s consent.
Challenges
Throughout the process, one main aspect of interviewing that felt challenging was figuring out how to pace my questions so that the participants were not bombarded with a string of questions, especially ones that were compounded Throughout the four interviews I conducted, it was a trial and error process to learn an effective way to pace questions. For example, with the first student I interviewed, I sped through a compounded question, but luckily she was able to answer everything. As I continued to interview more people, I got better at pacing myself and that overall allowed for the participants to give a more thoughtful answer rather than taking energy to remember the questions asked.
What I Learned
One thing we did before interviewing participants was conducting a mock interview with our classmates. During the mock interview, we tested out our interview questions and learned that some questions did not lead to any responses that were helpful to learning more about our objectives. The question that we chose to omit was “Where would you like to live after you graduate? Why?” In hindsight, we wanted to obtain insight about the reasons why students did not want to stay in East Lansing or the Greater Lansing area after they graduate if they answered “no.” Afterwards, we decided to focus on a more narrow scope for our objectives. From this experience, I learned the important step of testing ideas and questions before going out into the real world. Not only does this provide feedback for improvement, but it also gives insight into the appropriateness and effectiveness of the questions.
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One thing that I noticed from the first interview I conducted was that when I asked the question, “Are there any features from other social media that you like and would want to see being implemented into the website?” Although she answered, she also commented about how did not want to offend the professor and the project he was working on, so perhaps she was holding back on further comments pertaining to constructive criticism. To avoid that from happening with future interviewees, I made a point to emphasize how we are testing the website and not them. I learned to explain to the students that we are trying to see the website through fresh eyes. By focusing on a friendly welcome and emphasizing those points, I think that it helped the interviewees to ease up and to be more inclined to give feedback about the website without worrying about offending anyone.
Outcome
At the end of the project, I created an affinity diagram using Jamboard that categorized the participant’s points into different groups. Through the interviews, we discovered five improvements that could be implemented into the OurMichiganAvenue website:
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Videos to Explain Projects: Some of our participants said that there was a lot of text to read through for each project. They found that if you wanted to go through several projects in a day, there would be a lot of reading in order to understand each project. Adding a video function to the site would make understanding each project easier. Additionally, videos can showcase the improvement ideas or the overall area better than a single photo. There would also be a visual representation of how the project would be completed.
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An Account System: One participant stated that it would help to be able to follow someone whose posts they like. If someone on the site had many proposals that were interesting to the viewer, they would want to follow that account so that they could be updated when new posts were made. That way they could comment on posts after they were made.
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Emphasis on Public Discussion: A few of our participants wanted to see more emphasis on public discussion. They said that having a comment section is nice but it should be more involved in the project planning process. The comments are currently found at the bottom of the webpage. It would be nice if they were more visible.
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Current Status: Our participants suggested that there would be a way to keep track of a project as it develops. It was hard to know what stage the project was in. If users were able to submit multiple photos to show the project's progression that would be a nice way to increase engagement. They also wanted text updates about projects either through notifications or email.
5. Public Discussion: One of our participants said that it would be nice to have a place to sign up for public discussion. They said that they want to have a town hall meeting or public forum to discuss each project. If the site offered some way to organize a public meeting everyone could get together to talk about a project.