Asters: Interview with Rodney (painter)

Brief Introduction

Our team met with Rodney, a professional painter at CMU FMS, on November 10th, to learn more about his workflow, challenges, and day-to-day needs. The goal of this meeting was to gather firsthand insights to design and build a physical device that would assist Rodney in doing his job.

The meeting took place at the FMS facility building, and attendees included Rodney, Devin, Leaf, and Yutong. This session was part of our course’s design process to understand user needs before building a functional prototype.

Meeting Agenda

1. Introductions
Quick team intros + ask the painter about their role and daily work.

Name, how long they’ve been at FMS, type of painting work they typically do (interiors, exteriors, maintenance, specialty).

“What do you enjoy most about your work day?”

2. Project Overview
Briefly explain the goal of the class project, timeline, and what we’ll be building. Confirm they’re on the same page and ask for questions.

3. Understand Rodney’s daily work flow
Ask about their typical tasks, tools, frustrations, time-consuming steps, repetitive motions, safety concerns, and any “wish this were easier” moments. Encourage storytelling and conversation

4. Task Demonstration
If they’re comfortable, have them show a common task and take us through their daily tasks so we can observe challenges.

5. Early Idea Exploration
Light brainstorming: talk through possible helpful tools or interventions and sketch quick concepts.

6. Clarifying Constraints
Ask about size/weight limits, durability, safety requirements, and features they would or wouldn’t use (e.g. portable, handheld, or stationary device)

7. Wrap-Up

Thank them, confirm next steps, and collect any final notes/photos.

Summary & Takeaways

A photo of hand-written notes by Devin during interview. The notes outline quick ideas according to Rodney's daily frustrations on his job and brief notes such has his contact information and the paint can details.

We jot down notes during the interview to remind ourselfs of the specific frustrations that Rodney encounters throughout his day, and his workflow. We noted down some key opportunities identified and how we can design a helpful intervention.

Color Matching

Rodney started off the meeting by pointing out some of his technical frustrations during his workflow that he would like assistance with. One of the most significant ones was the color matching. He uses an existing device from PPG to color-match surfaces; however, there’s often trouble connecting to the device, and the general accuracy.

Something that improves the current PPG device

His alternative is to do the color matching by eye with a deck of cards; however, that method is often obstructed by lighting.

Create a device that projects control lighting on the surfaces that need to be painted on to help Rodney better estimate the paint color in natural/ambient lighting

Rodney holding a Datacolor color reader.

Rodney's current paint matching gadget

Rodney holds the color reader against a surface. He is demonstrating how the gadget works and transfers color information to his iPad.

Paint Weight Measurement

While Rodney showed us how his van, which he drives to paint sites, he mentioned that he currently estimates how much paint is left in each paint bucket by eye or by shaking the can. These methods can be unreliable, especially on large walls

A device that checks if enough paint is left for Rodney to paint an area: input estimated area and scale for bucket of paint to tell him how much it can paint, and if it is enough for the job.

Organizational Problems

A device that checks if enough paint is left for Rodney to paint an area: input estimated area and scale for bucket of paint to tell him how much it can paint, and if it is enough for the Rodney mentioned that, currently, they don’t have a controlled way to keep track of the placement of the leftover paints and the paint color that has been used for each room in the past. There are three painters who share the office, so the lack of organizational methods leads to excessive tasks during paint job coordination.

A sheet of what buildings take what paint
A chart of which room they went to and what paint they used.

More onsite pictures

A picture of Rodney's office in the FMS building. The picture features a rack full of paint bases and multiple surfaces with paint tools.

Rodney's work surface + paint storage

Rodney holds up a PPG Eggshell Pastel Base to demonstrate his most commonly used paint base.

Rodney's most commonly used paint base

Rodney stands in the corner of his office demonstrating how the paint mixing process works.

Paint-mixing station

Rodney places the paint can with the pigments onto a color mixing machine, where it shakes the can back and forth to distribute the pigments evenly.

Paint-mixing shaker machine

Rodney stands next to his van with the doors open, showing us the inside of his van and the tools that he brings to his job.

Inside of Rodney's van that he drive to paint sites

Rodney is showing Leaf the most commonly used tools on his cart that he usually stores in his van and takes to paint sites.

What he takes on site to his paint jobs

Thoughts

Our group agreed that the meeting went smoothly and gave us valuable, specific insights into the needs of Rodney’s job. We did not end up following the agenda as our interview turned out to be more of a conversation than a step-by-step process. However, we thought that the agenda was still helpful because it helped us guide the conversation and bring up specific points that would be helpful in the prototyping stage: for example, clarifying the constraints and asking Rodney to take us through his routine. This way, we were able to observe and discover the frustrations that he encounters that might not be on the top of his mind at the beginning of the conversation.

One challenge was getting the detailed data about the paint weight and paint overage by type. We wish we’d asked more about the paint base he uses the most often, and taken pictures of the labels instead of reaching out to him post-interview and searching online.

As a next step, we plan to preload coverage presets for different PPG paint bases and explore bucket-mounted or stationary interfaces to make the tool practical on-site.

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