I've been talking to people

I completed 3 one-hour interviews over the weeked. I have another scheduled for thursday. Here's my thoughts and progress this week, thus far..

what's going on? I've collected a lot of data from my four interviews. I'm starting to organize it all to find patterns and develop insights. After each of the interviews, I came back to my room and reviewed my notes, audio recordings and pictures, trying to think about the important things I learned. There's so much stuff, and I didn't even get to ask all the questions I wanted to ask! I really want to try and structure everything in some thorough way. I feel like structuring is important not only so I gain high level insights, but so I become more intimate with the details and better understand the whole of what I'm looking at so I can determine what else I should learn and how dorm kitchens and fridges can be improved. Anyway, what I've done so far is this:

I printed out small pieces of paper with all of the data I thought was interesting. I've started to cluster data that is similar and buildup the data into categories. I've also been thinking about some of my preconceived notions and hypotheses about what is going on. My method (if you can call it that) is motivated by stuff I've heard about like structured planning and affinity diagrams.



















Figure: The columns with post it notes are areas I've organized while the lower right hand corner contains data which I still need to organize (because it didn't seem to fit with the other stuff )

For example, going into the interviews, I had this idea that sharing was an important category. However, after I played around with the data I'd collected I came up with the category of social interactions around food, which further breaks down into helping others, conviviality, sharing resources, and anti-social behavior. Each of these categories further breaks down into a set of behaviors or attitudes of people. For example, conviviality breaks down into "I enjoy cooking with friends and loved ones", "I like to share the food I make with others", "My friends will make food, eat and drink while visiting", "the kitchen, food and drink make my room a great place to hang out." Each of these statements is supported by data from my interviews (which I haven't listed here). Here are the categories I've come up with so far:

social interactions around food

helping others
+ "People ask to use kitchen resources I have (but they don't)"
+ "I cook for other people to be nice"

conviviality
+ "I enjoy cooking with friends and loved ones"
+ "I like to share the food I make with others"
+ "My friends will make food, eat and drink while visiting"
+ "My room a great place to hang out because of the kitchen, food and drink"

sharing resources
+ "I don't have to have every kitchen tool because we share"
+ "I can have a wider variety of foods because we share"

anti-social behavior
+ "people steal food and disrupt my meal plan"
+ "people disrupt my preparation by not cleaning up after themselves"

eating needs and desires

control over what I eat
+ "I like to know exactly what's in my food"
+ "It's important I eat right so I don't feel ill"
+ "It's important I eat right so I look and feel good"
+ "I need to vary the foods I eat so I don't get bored"
+ "I'm particular about the taste and quality of my food"
+ "Food is important for maintaining my culture"

control over when I eat
+ "I eat at irregular hours"
+ "It's important to fit my eating schedule with my work and school schedule"
+ "I eat when I get hungry"
+ "I eat frequently"

control over where I eat
+ "I like to work while I eat"
+ "I like to be entertained while I eat"
+ "I feel more at ease when I eat at home"

food preparation

available resources affect my food prep experience
+ "I don't enjoy the act of preparing because I can't cook"
+ "I can't cook because I don't have a kitchen"
+ " I can't cook because I don't have time"
+ "I enjoy the act of preparing food in the kitchen"

learning to prepare meals
+ "I want to expand my cooking skills"
+ " I don't cook because I don't know how"

types of meals
+ "I prepare food just for myself"
+ "I prepare quick meals"
+ "I prepare meals with many parts"
+ "I make several meals out of leftovers"


I've also printed out lots of pictures from my interviews and started to group them and make observations to further add to my data(but haven't gotten too far yet with this).




























What should I learn more about? I'll bet these categories will change, especially after a few more interviews. I'd like to test some of the concepts out on future interviewees, to test their validity and expand on them. I haven't finished organizing all the data I've gathered, but the stuff I have left seems to be about organization, work methods, work space and resources, and the fridge. In future interviews, I want to delve deeper into specific behaviors related to planning, organizing and preparing and also focus more on the mini-fridge.


What should we do? I've spent most of my time wading through my findings and organizing them into insights that I;ve hardly spent any time determining design criteria and synthesizing design ideas. I think it would be good to sit down and think about what a "convivial mini-fridge" or "learning mini-fridge" or "healthy mini-fridge" could be. Or, like Lucas suggested, I should ask other people what these fridges could be.
I have been keeping track of the few design ideas that have comee up. For instance, I've noticed that (1) appliances, like microwaves, take of a lot of premium space (2) people try to make use of vertical space (and for good reason, since it's efficient). This might suggest putting appliances on raised platforms or otherwise allowing for easier stacking or moving of large appliances.