August 2021 - December 2021

Ann Arbor, MI Hartland, MI

Cromaine Library

As part of a graduate course, I worked as part of a 5-person team as a consultant for Cromaine Library. Throughout the project, I used user-centered qualitative research methods to better understand how the company's complex event planning process could be streamlined. Specifically, my duties included conducting interviews with both users and stakeholders, as well as synthesizing the data into coherent findings and usable recommendations for our client.

Goal: Streamline company's event planning process

Type: Course Project

Role: Lead Editor, Primary

Client Contact

Skills: User-Centered Design, Qualitative Methods, Ethnographic Research, Contextual Inquiry,

Consulting

Located in Hartland, Michigan, Cromaine District Library is an institution that seeks to increase the well-being of its community members by providing engaging, enriching, and diverse services. Its primary goal is to serve as a cultural center where visitors can access information, discover and develop new interests, and connect with other members. The library also coordinates several events throughout the year as part of its goal to connect its community members and foster deeper relationships. These events involve multiple stakeholders and contractors, as well as the library’s internal management.

Background

Following an initial meeting with our client, we learned that Cromaine Library executes many successful programs each year. However, their current event planning process necessitates streamlining in order to reduce issues related to communication, scheduling, and use of technology tools. This informed our need to analyze the company's event planning process through qualitative research methods and user-centered design. Ultimately, the goal of this project was to first systematically analyze the library’s event planning process and then offer practical solutions that could be implemented without creating new, additional problems or distracting staff from their key mission: hosting excellent events for their patrons.

My role

As lead editor, I oversaw writing of all project reports, including structure and organization. I also managed professional communications with our client and drafted emails to outside stakeholders and users as our group's primary client contact.

Original problem:

Cromaine Library runs a lot of successful programs but their program planning process could use some streamlining to cut down on issues related to communication, scheduling, and use of technology tools.

Project goal 1:

Systematically analyze the library’s event planning process

Project goal 2:

Offer practical solutions that could be implemented without creating new problems

Methodology

Data Collection

Phase 1

Data Analysis

Phase 2

Recommendation Formulation

Phase 3

Throughout the project, we applied contextual inquiry research methods to understand the stakeholders' working processes and pain points to provide valuable recommendations. Contextual inquiry is a human-centered approach that involves detailed interviews of a representative sample of customers to understand their day-to-day activities, followed by interpretation sessions to analyze critical patterns. This approach includes three phases: data collection, data analysis, and recommendation formulation.

About the Project

Data Collection

Phase

We collected data by interviewing our key stakeholders, all of whom participate in Cromaine Library's event planning process. During this phase, we gathered information about what the stakeholders were responsible for and how they collaborated to execute library events. In order to do so, we first began by identifying three interviewee categories based on the stakeholders' job roles.

Afterwards, we created three separate interview protocols for each of the categories. For each protocol, we created interview questions and broke them down into three sections. These sections addressed idea generation for event planning, technology and communication, and possible areas of improvement.

We worked in pairs to conduct the interviews; one member acted as the interviewer and another acted as the notetaker. Each interview lasted 45 to 60 minutes. After each interview, we shared the notes and the recordings among our team members. During our team meetings, each team member shared important information that they learned from any interviews that they had participated in that week. In total, we conducted six interviews: one for the Administrative job role, four for the Library Services job role, and one for the Outside Stakeholder job role. After finishing the data collection phase, we moved towards interpreting and analyzing the data.

Administrative

Library

services

Outside

stakeholders

Data Analysis

Phase 2

During the data analysis phase, we aimed to organize our data and use it to identify Cromaine Library’s critical challenges while also gaining insight into the possible causes of these challenges. First, during interpretation sessions, my team and I listened to the interview recordings together, summarizing each interview’s critical points and placing these points into a structured Excel spreadsheet. For each minute of the interview, we aimed to create one piece of qualitative data. Each piece of qualitative data consisted of one or two sentences summarizing the content from that minute of the interview. In total, we created around 220 pieces of qualitative data from the interviews.

We then created an affinity wall in which we organized the qualitative data into a hierarchical diagram of information. To create the affinity wall, we transformed each piece of data into a digital sticky note. Next, we grouped together related sticky notes. After creating a cluster of related qualitative data points, we added a new sticky note which summarized the cluster. These summaries helped to reveal the patterns between data points. After this first round of grouping and summarizing, we grouped the sticky note clusters into higher level clusters of clusters. We repeated this process three times, forming a hierarchical structure of clusters and summaries. Eventually, we obtained four high-level cluster summaries which represented the critical themes which arose during the interviews. These themes informed our understanding of Cromaine Library’s event planning challenges.

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Recommendation Formulation

Phase 3

Next, we reviewed our findings and formulated recommendations by utilizing a structured brainstorming process. During this phase, our goal was to develop practical recommendations that could be easily implemented to ease the library’s event planning challenges. We began by formally defining a list of challenges and brainstorming recommendations for each recognized challenge. We discussed our findings, conducted research and tests, and finally produced a list of 9 practical and simple recommendations. The following section of this report is a selection of some of our 9 findings and recommendations.

Selected findings and recommendations

Selected Findings and Recommendations

Difficulties with outside stakeholders

Evidence

One interviewee explained that she has received some outlandish requests from outside stakeholders. For example, one musical act’s contract stipulated that green M and Ms be removed from the bowl of snacks which they requested.

Possible solutions

Create a contract summary document
Create a “Stakeholder List” that is shared between departments

Rationale

The contract summary document should emphasize points that have created repeated problems
The Stakeholder List would include an entry for every outside stakeholder that has been employed by the library

Patron no-shows

Evidence

“Children almost always show up to the events that their parents signed them up for - the problem exists primarily for adult patrons.”

“In the past few months, we have experienced an uptick in no-shows.”

Possible solutions

Google Form that asks patrons who have signed up for an event whether or not they’ll be attending.
Follow-up emails to patrons who did not attend an event.

Rationale

Sending this form a day or two prior to the event would give library staff a rough idea of how many patrons might show up.

Lack of interdepartamental communication

Evidence

“Each department tends to create its own procedures for event idea generation and planning.”

“Most event ideas are generated in sessions which involve only one department.”

Possible solutions

To foster a more collaborative culture between library departments, we recommend the library plan a Program Planning Day.

Rationale

Staff can share ideas in small workshops, creating a set of shared documents.
After the Program Planning Day, staff will draw from this information to foster greater interdepartmental collaboration.

Overabundance of technology tools

Evidence

“When you’re ready to book a presenter and you’ve got DocuSign and then you’ve got Evanced where you plug in this information...and then you’re putting it in the Google Doc...it’s a lot of different places that you have to remember to put things. I wish that somehow all of that was streamlined.”

Possible solutions

Add technology workshops to Program Planning Day.
Implement a Google Form to collect feedback on technology tools.
Switching to a combination of Google calendar and Eventbrite to manage events.

Rationale

Improve the knowledge of technology tools to reduce confusion.
Would return accurate data relating to the use of technology tools.

Reflection

Cromaine Library hosts fantastic events that are popular with patrons and greatly enhance the health of Hartland’s community. Beyond that, library staff is flexible and creative, coming up with new ideas and executing events even when complex challenges arise. Still, problems relating to communication, outside stakeholders, and other issues can sometimes derail the event planning process.

Using background research, structured interviews, and qualitative data analysis methods, we concluded that the library could make certain small adjustments to ease these challenges. Armed with these findings and recommendations, we are confident that Cromaine Library can solve the problems which arise when planning and executing the phenomenal events that it hosts.