I recently received a design challenge which was to make a better repair and maintenance report experience for my school and here is my design.
In order to design a better experience, there should be 4 general steps.
- Understanding the current experience.
- Analyzing how the experience could be better.
- Making sketches and drafts.
- Iterating on drafts and prototype making.
Understanding the current experience.
Currently, how to report facilities maintenance
1.Report to Facilities Management Services or University Housing Services via website based on facilities type
2.Email to school stuff who is responsible for maintenance and repair
What do people think about current experience
- I asked my classmates and friends, most of them told me that the only way they know how to report was to email our own school staff. However, for public facilities they had no idea. One of my classmate told that once he called school police to report a broken light.
- I interviewed Megan who is responsible for handling maintenance report email for ETC. She told me that once a printer breaks, she usually receive tons of emails to report that, but almost no one cares about the sidewalk behind the building
Analyzing how the experience could be better.
From students’ aspect, the pain points of current maintenance and repair experience
From school and staff’s aspect, the pain points of current maintenance and repair experience
In order to make maintenance reporting more easy also make students more willing to do so, based on the current situations, the user stories should be like following:
- Students should be able to report with detail at the place where s/he finds the broken facility by mobile phone.
- If the student do not have time to report right away when s/he finds the problem, s/he should be able to report later and also be able to indicate the location and the facility.
- Students should be able to know if other report the same problem and get feedback after reported. Staff should not receive repeat report about same issue.
- Students should care more about the surrounding with this new experience.
New experience concept design 101
Key words: QR code&FID, location , picture, feedback
What QR code&FID for?
For indoor facilities have a FID(facility ID) on them. Reports with FID make the staff more easy to know which one is broken. And the QR code would make people more easy to report since they can use mobile phone to scan and open the report website.
Location&picture？
For those outdoor facilities that have no FID, by loading the location, it also make the staff more easy to know which one is broken.
Pictures help the staff to see what happened and going onsite with preparation
Getting feedback
Receiving feedback would let people feel more involved as they know their action matters.
Making sketches and drafts.
My main concept is to let students use their mobile phone to report broken facility onsite by scanning a QR code or taking pictures. Students can upload location and description to give more detail about the issue. Also they would be rewarded from reporting.
Staffs who are in charge of maintenance could see where they should send people to repair. Also staffs could see maintenance history so if one facility has been repaired many times in a short period, they would know something need to be replaced.
Wireframe flows
Reporting wireframe, any student, faculty and staff can use their phone to report broken facility.
Managing wireframe, staff can use the managing website the check reports and managing them.
Iterating on drafts and prototype making.
The mock prototype(ios platform) of reporting problem from uploading location. User upload the location first and then add more detail about what is going on.
Other core reporting process pages.
The core interfaces for management pages
A little bit more – Feedback email
There should be few emails to update people about their report
- Email time: Report received -> Being repaired -> Repair finished
- Each email should contain what this user have reported and the status updated time
OF course, if this user wins a gift card, another email with the card ID should be sent. Even this user does not win anything, at the end of each month s/he should also receive an email to remind people that they always have the chance.
Takeaway
- There might be more place or more ways that people could find how to report.
- The maintenance database is harder to design as I thought, so it need more time and more thinking into it.
- There might be more ways to let people feel more involved, such as list all people who have report on the school website, but it could bring more design about protect people’s privacy, which also deserve more thinking.
DONGMENG ZHANG 