USer Study

The goal of this study is to gather information about the users’ intake on the implementation of this new technology on their island.

• What is the biggest issue regarding the logistics they face?

• What are the benefits of technology on the livelihood of the island?

• Are there any adverse effects of the technology we plan to prototype? Ecologically, Culturally, Environmental, Economic, etc…

• Does the use of technology impose any boundaries between potential users and service providers? (i.e. some sort of disconnect)

The people we would intend to study are, mostly, people who have had first-hand experience with the issue itself. People who reside in Palau have had problems shipping packages, receiving packages, or anything in between when it comes to “international logistics” in the country. Reaching these people, and interviewing them to get their perspective we feel would be our best option in regard to our interview participants at the least. Ideally, we’d “recruit” our participants by asking some people that fit our target demographic to participate in our study. Additionally, we will reach out to a nearby logistics company to provide us with some information regarding the logistics process and the different challenges that they face. We plan on then taking all of the information that they provide us either on some sort of messenger or survey system online, and taking the time to sort through all the information and data.

Methods

• Group Interview - provides multiple different perspectives at once. Additionally, people are able to build on different points brought up during the discussion. Participants may be more inclined to speak after hearing the stories of others as well.

• Interview - Having an interview helps to get a personal perspective of topics without the influence of a group. It creates an atmosphere in which the participant is free to speak without interruptions or peer pressure. For some participants to speak freely on an issue, isolation gives them time to recollect their thoughts and also remember their personal experiences with a service.

• Questionnaire - Gives the opportunity for the people who are questioning to reach not just one but many people with the use of a variety of questions, as deep or shallow as they see fit to get the most out of it. Questionnaires are efficient at questions being “distributed to a large number of participants without requiring additional data-gathering resources.”

By using several different study methods we’re able to procure different perspectives from potential users, stakeholders, and other individuals who may have experience with the specific aspects of the project. For example, the experience a logistics technician has with delivering a package may be interpreted differently than how an individual receiving it might perceive it to be.

Results from Group Interview

The group interview was conducted with 5 participants who all had different experiences with different logistics agencies. We asked them similar questions to what we gave to our participants that did the questionnaires. Comparing their responses to the different questions, we found their responses to be fairly mixed but generally followed the same trend. A majority of them wanted to see some type of implementation of technology more similar to that in the US as they believed it improved the experience of users when it came to learning more about the status of their different packages. Regarding the issues with timing, they all shared similar feelings as a majority of packages came between periods of weeks to multiple months while a majority of the cost remained fairly high. An issue regarding the consolidation at a center located in Palau that was brought up was that it would conflict with the existing post office. As a group, we had a discussion about the difficulties the staff there had and the different areas that could be improved upon there. Going more in-depth with the technological impacts, some questions arose regarding the use of drone technology and how users would be interacting with the application that would be used to monitor and aid in the logistics process. Most of the concerns were regarding noise and some issues with packages potentially dropping their payloads accidentally, while the app was met with some resistance in regards to how it would be received by older users. All in all, the group study provided a lot of useful data for us to use in the prototyping phase that can help us address some of the issues that we went over in our questions.