CoDesign 

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CoDesign Goals: 

- Determine one’s mental and physical processes after losing an item. 

- Determine the viability/layout of a potential website and what should be included on it. 

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CoDesign with Students: 

We first wanted to find out what a person would do if they lost something, and asked to be walked through this process. If they hadn’t lost something, we asked them to assume what they would do. 

Though our questions that we asked the students we found out that most students often just give up when losing their items, even if they really want them back, it almost seems pointless to them.

 

Next we had them  described the following item. We did this so we could understand what features would be distinctive for a website search.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the item description activity we found that item and color is the most important, as well as random distinctive features, like the dent. We were surprised that the brand wasn’t as important.

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CoDesign with Front Desk Employee: 

We then wanted to understand the interaction between the front-desk employee and the student who had lost an item. We asked them to walk us through a typical process.

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Her Process:
1. Student comes up to me
2. Tell them to look around in the pile of items
3. If they can’t find it they usually walk away … sometimes they inquire more
4. Ask them about the item
5. If it’s an expensive item - check clipboard/paperwork
6. If I have it I ask for more information (when they lost it, where, any key             features)

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From her process we found that students are quick to give up when looking for an item, even if they appear to look stressed or worried.

We also wanted the Front Desk Employee to participate in the item description activity, just to make sure their descriptions would align with that of the students.

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From her description, we were glad to hear that it aligned with that of the students. We found that using descriptors like color, item, and brand would be helpful on our website.

 

 

CoDesign with Lost and Found Coordinator: 

The lost and found coordinator wasn't very interested in our idea. She said she had too much work and didn't want to switch to a new system. Despite this, she walked us through how she handles lost and found calls and joined our item description activity. To make things easier for her, we decided that after two weeks in the front desk lost and found, the item's location would automatically update on the Purdue Surplus store, helping students without causing extra work for the coordinator.

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Co-Design Conclusions: 

Our co-designs helped us understand user preferences and improve the lost and found workflow. We learned valuable lessons about effective co-design methods. Initially, a ranking activity proved unhelpful, so we shifted to having participants describe how they would label lost items, providing crucial insights into important website characteristics. This information guided us in creating an updated sketch, which was then transformed into a wireframe design.