Fire Prevention Bureau
SI 501 Course: Contextual Inquiry and Project Management
My role: Group Editor and Notetaker
Focus: UX Research
Year: Fall 2018
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Overview:
This was a semester long, group project working with the local fire department to improve their fire inspection process for their employees and improve customer satisfaction for the businesses being inspected. Our group was made up of four students including myself chosen by our instructor. My group utilized semi-structured interviews, qualitative data analysis through an affinity diagram to provide user centered recommendations such as streamlining their scheduling process.
Process:
Problem Statement
In our initial client meeting with the Fire Prevention Bureau, I learned more details about the problem they presented to us. The problem statement, “...The City’s current fire inspection process is inefficient, which results in decreased customer satisfaction amongst businesses when a re-inspection of a building is required. Additionally, we believe areas of opportunity exist to improve process flow, better utilization of the management assistant, and staff time management.” (Fire Prevention Bureau: SI 501Project Statement)
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Background Research Report
I focused my background research report on a topic that stood out to me at our client meeting which was scheduling a fire inspection with businesses. The department told us that the fire inspectors are the ones who schedule the appointment. They expressed the challenge with scheduling is that they are not talking to the right person at the business who participates in the fire inspection. This challenge causes an increase in the time and energy spent of the fire inspector. The fire inspector’s workload is not only to do the fire inspection, but to provide fire prevention education to the community as well as fire investigation.
Interviews
We conducted several interviews and held interpretation sessions following each interview. For a follow up interview, I wanted to learn more about the workflow on scheduling a fire inspection. We learned that for one successful scheduling of a fire inspection, it can take an average of 6 minutes from start (opening Firehouse, a software used that provides information to the fire department such as contact information) to finish (putting information into Outlook’s calendar). For unsuccessful scheduling, it takes longer because you are either waiting to find the right contact person or you have to wait until you can leave a voicemail. Although the process is straightforward, there was room for improvement. I designed the workflow charts to better showcase what is being done and what could be improved.
This is a workflow page that I designed.
I added instances (circled in green) that I observed.
Affinity Wall
We used the data from the interpretation sessions also known as affinity notes to build an affinity wall. We learned that the fire inspection process was quite efficient, but it was the before and after the fire inspection that needed improvement. One of our suggestions involved improvement to the scheduling process. These improvements include having a master list of their business contacts, having a standardization of the scheduling process, and streamline the current scheduling process.
Partial piece of the affinity wall due to client confidentiality
Construction of Affinity Wall Time Lapse
Report Recommendations
For our final report, I wrote the recommendations that involved the scheduling process. Here is a more detailed description of each solution from the report:
Have a Master List
Our team recommended the fire prevention bureau create a master list to guide the team the planning and scheduling process. A master list makes it easier to locate which business needs to be inspected. This list can be broken down by region for the fire inspectors. By having a master list, it can help inspectors by not having to take additional time to search for important information that is needed for scheduling. Also, having a master list allows the team to track the progress of the inspection goals.
I added the improvement areas circled in yellow.
A streamlined fire inspection scheduling flowchart.
Have a Standardization of Scheduling Process
We recommended having a standard process on scheduling inspections because it makes it consistent throughout the department. Inspectors will know what is expected and how to carry out the scheduling inspection process as well as utilizing all the tools efficiently.
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By having a standardized scheduling process, the department can increase customer satisfaction. As mentioned earlier in the report, businesses often only find out that they are being inspected when an inspector arrives. A standardized process can be made by making sure the business gets a confirmation on when they are scheduled.
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Streamline current scheduling process
We recommended streamlining the current scheduling process. There are a lot of steps throughout scheduling that can be minimize. Since the fire prevention bureau is adapting a new software, ImageTrend, there may be opportunity to utilize its features. For example, to include contact information, such as the phone number and email address in one spot in a database to help reduce the time bouncing between different screens.
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If it’s in the budget, we recommended hiring interns to consolidate the information into a consolidated database. The scheduler can use the centralized database and have all the information to schedule the fire inspection.
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Deliverables
We wrote a final report and gave two presentations: one for our class and one with our client. Our client gave us positive feedback and commented that we were able to give them feasible solutions to implement.
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Feedback from my teammates:
“Janel, you are such an outstanding editor and notetaker! I feel that there were countless times when we would have missed out on important existing problems to discuss and critical information had it not been for your detailed notetaking. I really admire your abilities in always paying attention to the smallest detail and efficiency in recording everything.”
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“I think Janel is a very valuable asset and will be a great team member for the rest of the project.”
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“Great team player. Kept the team on time and on track.”
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“Janel is great, I think she's extremely organized and that's useful for keeping us on track. I don't have any critiques of her performance at the moment.”
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“I think you were amazing at documenting the process of our group discussions. It helped us so much when we needed to review our progress and allowed us to discuss efficiently without worrying about anyone's ideas being neglected!”
What I learned:
I learned how important it was to establish clear communication with the team and set aside designated meeting times. I enjoyed taking notes and made sure that we were all on the same page with our group project. I also recognized that sometimes the problem statement given to you is not really the problem the client is facing. Through the affinity wall, my group and I learned that there were underlying issues that were more pressing to fix.
I learned how to conduct semi-structured interviews. My favorite interview was shadowing the workflow of scheduling a fire inspection. I had the employee talk out each step of the process and as I observed, I noticed certain steps could be improved. This ended up being one of the recommendations suggested to the fire prevention bureau.