Sections:
Problem Statement
Notes from Interviews
User Classes
Goals
Problem Statement
Housing managers and desk workers need to efficiently manage dormitory-related duties. In particular, they need to efficiently manage static/transient resident information, resident access to dormitory housing, and resident billing/fees.
Currently, this is difficult because the systems responsible for these functions are on different, isolated platforms, thus unnecessarily duplicating work. In addition, existing desk software suffers from usability issues with respect to learnability, safety, and efficiency. Last, significant amount of resident information has yet to be digitized.
Notes from
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Interviews
We interviewed several individuals with various positions in the MIT housing and facilities system.
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- Most desk workers are computer-literate and thus they are usually able to learn how a given software platform works by playing with/exploring the software. However, even these computer-literate individuals are having usability issues with the current software used to handle most desk functions. Namely, the desk software is unlearnable, unsafe, and suffers from some GUI performance/efficiency issues.
- While desk workers who are experienced may know how to execute the commonly used tasks in the current desk software, they are unable to figure out how to execute less commonly used tasks when the need arises. Moreover, the software’s lack of learnability poses a steep learning curve for novice desk workers.
- A significant amount of resident information has yet to be digitized, blocking efficient desk worker performance.
- Desk workers struggle to enforce security restrictions on people entering the dormitory due to an inability to confront suspicious entrants and an inability to quickly access/refer to resident guest lists.
User Classes
1.
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House Managers:
- Age: generally older than 50 years old
- Education: educated in operations or dealing with managing systems
- Experience:
- Housing: 15+ years of housing experience
- Technology: Uses Windows computer and knows how to use the computer systems, but still am unsure how to deal with problems on the computer (e.g. what happens in response to a confirmation dialog)
- Usage: deals with residential information on a normal basis
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