Caroline David, angie yang, richard dong and aaron castillo
What is the experience of students at Brown University living in on-campus dormitories?
By conducting ethnographic research, we can begin to get a full understanding of the student experience in dormitories, including positive elements and pain points. Anthropological research combined with the pursuit of better design is referred to as "ethnographic thinking," it can be used to design a better future experience for students in Brown dormitories. In its initial stages, this kind of research will bring up more questions than answers.
planning
GANTT CHART FOR PROJECT PLANNING
Method: MAP OF ENGAGEMENT
Who are all of the stakeholders involved in the student experience of dormitory life at Brown?
Asking this question will help us to figure out who to conduct research on, and what kinds of questions to ask to learn how they understand dormitory life.
Method: interviewing
I took the lead on designing the interview questions for several different groups of interviewees, including students, residential peer advisors (RPLs), and staff in the Office of Residential Life.
I designed the questions to help gain the trust of interviewees, elicit stories about their experience, and to probe unspoken beliefs or underlying assumptions.
The questions all help to answer big-picture inquiries such as "how do students relate to their living spaces?" and "how do the physical aspects of student's rooms affect their experiences in dorms?"
Student interview outline
Method: room inventories
By asking participants to inventory their living space during the interview, we were able to explore discrepancies between how students explained their experience in dormitories and how they behaved in their room.
This exercise also helped to reveal aspects of dormitory living that interviewees otherwise might not have thought to mention, and gave rise to stories which provided a rich source of data.
Storyboarding
I helped to translate key insights from student interviews into storyboards, to give the team and outside stakeholders a visual understanding of one student's experience.
continued Research Proposal
After using all of these methods on a small scale, a full research plan was developed. This research will include enough participants to result in meaningful insights about the student experience in dormitory life, which will allow us to make recommendations to the University on areas for improvement.
The research collected from this project was analyzed and expanded upon in June of 2022 as part of the Dorm Party project.