Observations and Interviews

User A is the associate housemaster in my dorm, who has a toddler. She said that she has had a lot of difficulties coordinating schedules with babysitters. She has often had the issue of scheduling a night in advance and the babysitter has to cancel at the last minute. She said that finding a babysitter at the last minute is often very difficult. She also sometimes doesn’t need a babysitter for a specific night, and that can make scheduling more complicated. She uses 3 babysitters, but prefers 2 of them much more over the third. She said that she would be willing to adjust her schedule if it meant she would be using one of her preferred babysitters. 

User B has worked as a babysitter for family friends. She said that she dealt with many logistical issues while working as a babysitter. One issue she faced was that sometimes two families would request the same night, and then if the first one cancelled she would lose the opportunity for the second job. She said that she had trouble finding enough jobs, especially because of scheduling issues. She said it was difficult to communicate schedules, especially because sometimes the parents don’t care which night, but she might have a preference of which night because she is trying to maximize the number of jobs she can work.

Her process for finding a babysitting job was very one-way. A client would call her and ask either if she was free at a specific time, and she would respond yes or no, or if she was free any time in the next week or so, and then she would respond with the best date for her. As a result of this process, she didn’t really get much control over her schedule.

User C is a babysitter who has faced a lot of scheduling issues with families she worked with. She said she often received a lot of last minute requests that she had to turn down because they didn’t fit in her schedule. She also says that communicating her schedule to parents is especially difficult because it is constantly changing.

Her process of getting a babysitting job would be to wait for a parent she worked for to call her and ask if she was free at a specific time. If she was not free at that time, the parent might ask her for friends that might be.

User Classes

Babysitters

Parents

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