Elderberries - Interview Documentation

Purpose of the meeting was to help understand the needs and desires of the people we are trying to design things for. In this case, Matt and Tim, carpenters, in the FMS building 12:30-1:55 on Monday 11/10. During this meeting we would accompany them on their work task for approximately an hour and a half. During this meeting we are meant to understand some issue that is solvable via our ability to build simple machinery without it being redundant. Zar was sick but G and Luke were present (Elderberries). Carpentry shop. 

The agreed-upon agenda was to sort of use this time to “shadow” Tim and Matt so that we could get a good idea of what they do on a daily basis. So we followed them around, saw what/how they do their work, and then asked questions along the way. Given that we were following carpenters it was expected that our ideas would be limited due to the plethora of devices available to carpenters. As such, we intended to focus on smaller niche issues, issues that are less likely to have a device that already solves them.

• Got to know them very well: workplace culture, habits, daily tasks, the way they log their work/time. Overall, very laid-back or a lot easier than working out in the field because CMU takes care of them. Everything is supplied (like tools, hardware, etc). Go around and check off commissions on an app. 

• They primarily were hanging items on walls and installing the needed fixtures. 

• While hanging fixtures they had preferred to use their own tools rather than the ones that came with the items. I.e., they preferred their own drill bits over plastic ones.

• Need a lot more categorization of things. They are very knowledgeable about their field, so don’t necessarily need help with specific tools or tasks because carpentry has specific tools already for specific use cases.

• Most of their major requests were software focused: i.e. to keep track of ceiling tiles. 

• Stuff falling off the cart, sometimes hard to keep track of things that fall off “but honestly it’s because I could be a bit more organized”.  

• One of the carpenters is said to be the culprit in making the cart a disorganized mess.

• Parlay machine came from identifying them all kind of knowing each-other, but there’s a large age gap and they tend to keep to their pairs or people that they already know.

• As soon as a parlay machine was mentioned, everyone in the store room turned their heads.

• Our goal was to go off the rails, we didn’t even notice how much time passed.

• Matt and Tim were so nice and willing to engage in conversation with us.

• Wish we had more time with them. Time to sit down and talk while they weren’t working. May not have seen the extent of their work because they had an easier job that day– maybe we would have been able to see some more of their intricate devices. 

• We are having serious issues in envisioning an idea that would be meaningfully useful for the carpenters that is uniquely built by us and is still useful.

• It could have been more useful if we had training in carpentry from them as to better understand the machinery they use in the carpentry shop. 

An image of our notes during the interview.