User Interviews

As part of the discovery/define stage, I wanted to find out more as to why university students struggle when it comes to routine, and what we can do to help combat it. Doing these interviews helped me understand the pain points and challenges of students, what they care about, and how they feel about, and how they currently face the challenge.

Preparing Interview Questions

I then started preparing my interviews that I would undertake with some of my friends who are in university. The purpose of these interviews was to find out more about what university students were struggling with and currently doing with the problem of an unhealthy lifestyle, including a poor routine, which in turn all leads to lack of focus in class. With this in mind, I wrote down some questions that I would plan to ask in a user interview. Most questions are open-ended but some are yes and no answers. Here are the questions that I will ask to get a better insight into university students and lack or routine.

Do you have a consistent routine now at university?
What does a typical day for you look like?
What tools or methods do you currently use to plan your day?
Do you struggle to live healthily, for example eating a healthy diet or getting enough sleep?
Do you have set times for studying, eating, sleeping? If not, why?
Do you think an external service like an app would help you stick to a routine?

Conducting The Interviews

The next step was to actually go out and interview a few fellow university students. Nielson Norman Group recommend doing around 3-5 interviews to get the best insight.

Interview 1 Notes - James

Do you have a consistent routine now at university? No routine now at university, but would like to have one.
What does a typical day for you look like? Typical day when not in uni, he has breakfast, gets ready, exercise, have lunch, work on university projects, then chills/socialise in evening.
What tools or methods do you currently use to plan your day? Would use notes app a little bit, doesn’t use calendar app or reminders.
Do you struggle to live healthily, for example eating a healthy diet or getting enough sleep? Lacks motivation and takes a nap. Yeah, has impact on overall health. Lack of routine of getting up early when he’s off, eats and exercises fine.
Do you have set times for studying, eating, sleeping? If not, why? Doesn’t have set times because of lack of consistency, ideally would like to but can’t because of inconsistent timetable.
Do you think an external service like an app would help you stick to a routine? Thinks an external service would help him prioritise things like studies, giving him incentive to stick to it. </aside>

Interview 2 Notes - Katie

Do you have a consistent routine now at university? Her routine is based around the amount of uni work that she has, and that is the priority.
What does a typical day for you look like? Typical day is her getting up early, going to class then coming home to do extra studying. She normally has a quick lunch to make sure I don’t lose study time. Depending if she has a test or not she will stay up late and revise or socialise.
What tools or methods do you currently use to plan your day? Would use Google Calendar a bit but her routine is mostly improvised.
Do you struggle to live healthily, for example eating a healthy diet or getting enough sleep? Because she has so much work to do, she struggles to find time to make proper meals or exercise regularly.
Do you have set times for studying, eating, sleeping? If not, why? Doesn’t have set times because of workload, times for eating and sleeping are based around her study times.
Do you think an external service like an app would help you stick to a routine? Thinks an external service would help remind her not to neglect her friends or taking care of herself. </aside>

Interview 3 Notes - Luke

Do you have a consistent routine now at university? His routine is pretty consistent, keeps himself busy with socialising and staying on top of coursework.
What does a typical day for you look like? Typical day is him getting up early and going for a walk or exercising. He then goes to class or studies, each day he makes sure he does at least some work. In the evenings he either socialises or relaxes but keeps it balanced.
What tools or methods do you currently use to plan your day? Likes using sticky notes on a wall for what he has to do each day, means he can quickly write stuff down and remember them later.
Do you struggle to live healthily, for example eating a healthy diet or getting enough sleep? Doesn’t struggle with his health, as he gets good sleep and has a nutritious diet.
Do you have set times for studying, eating, sleeping? If not, why? Has set times each day as he thinks this is very important for his body to know when to work and when to relax.
Do you think an external service like an app would help you stick to a routine? Likes the way he does it now, would need to be pretty similar to what he has now. </aside>

Interview 4 Notes - Luke Follow Up

Do you use sticky notes as reminders everyday? Yeah, he likes to write new ones everyday as everyday is different.
Do you have a certain method or technique that you use to organise the sticky notes, or is it just random? He likes to colour co-ordinate the ones that are more important, and the ones that are one-offs.
How often would you look at them? He only looks at them every so often, to serve as a quick reminder.
Is there any issues with the way you currently remind yourself of what you are doing for the day? Has to be in the same room, has to re-write a lot of things.
Would you use a digital version of your current method? Yes, he thinks it would help him if he is out and about to still get reminded of what he’s doing. </aside>

Findings

From these interviews I have gained a lot of insight into how students try to stay in a routine with the craziness of university life. I found that those who don’t have a method or way of organising their day end up finding it difficult to keep a routine, and Luke who uses a method of keeping a routine was the one who struggled with it the least. This shows that having some way of setting reminders and organising your day is so important, as you can either become idle, or get blown about by the business of life. I also learnt a lot from the follow up interview with Luke, to learn more about how he uses sticky notes to serve as reminders of what he is doing and what his routine is. This is the path that I am going to go down for my project and somehow digitise using sticky notes as a way of setting reminders and helping students have a routine of tasks that they do for the day.