Contextual Research
I collaborated with a team of students in conducting research on the ideal experience of sharing a living space, more specifically as it relates to apartment-style living in urban areas.
Check our full magazine is right here :)
My Roles
Schedule and conduct interviews with users and potential stakeholders
Design sensory cues and cultural probs.
Coming up with discussion guidelines.
Research on potential stakeholders.
Make affinity diagrams.
Designing the final magazine.
Our Goal
We plan to improve the lives of people who find challenges with sharing a living space. As the population continues to grow in urban areas, it is increasingly becoming a necessity for people of all ages to find a space to share safely and comfortably with others.
Our goal is to uncover insightful research to present to our stakeholders, using methods such as personal interviews, a cultural probe, sensory cue kit, and affinitization.
Emerging Research Signals
“Sharing a bathroom causes tension between roommates.”
“The best experience with roommates involve actively doing things together.”
“It is always awkward doing different things in the same living room. Like when I’m working but my roommate is watching Netflix.“
Potential Stakeholder Map
After fixating the area of research, we came up with a stakeholder map. It was divided into three main parts, the middle being a group that will be closely related to our research.
For the companies, we selected them based on who will be interested on our final research deliverable.
Research
Secondary Research
Desk research
Primary Research
In depth interviews
We had a chance to interview 9 young adults regarding their experience in sharing a living space.
After contacting potential businesses that would be interested in our final magazine, we interviewed 2 co-living and co-sharing companies.
Cultural Probes
We designed three tasks to gather inspirational data about people’s priorities and experiences of living in a shared spaces. We received nearly 300 responses in the Downtown Savannah, Georgia area.
Sensory Cues (provided by Lextant)
We designed six tasks to collect insightful data about people’s emotions and reactions towards certain textures and visual elements that could be found in a shared living space.
Data Analysis
We gathered all of the data that we collected over the eight week period of research and analyzed it by organizing each data point into related groups and gaining insights from their relationships.
Key Insights from our In-depth Interviews
Cultural Probe Details
We asked people to pick their top three priorities whilst sharing a living space. We made sure the shape of the sticker distinguished each gender (Female, Male, Other), as well as the colors to identify the 1st, 2nd and 3rd priority.
We made sure the visual design of this poster was both easy and engaging for pedestrians.
We wanted to conduct a quick survey to hear insights of people’s experience of sharing a living space with someone else.
We also brought in a special friend that represented “the roommate”. We used the inflated boxer to be everyone’s roommate. People could either hug or punch the toy after they finished our survey, depending on how they felt about their previous or current roommate.