Team
Keenan(Me): Product Design & Strategy, Vaibhav: PM, Kaustubh: Graphic Designer, Shaam, Jayesh, Mrunal: Engineers
In a nutshell
The Problem
Print heavy environments like Architecture & Design schools possess unique challenges that are unaccounted for in the printing space, be it in in-house printing services or external print shops that serve such Individuals.
Design Opportunity
How might we empower students to make informed decisions to ensure timely submissions while streamlining and optimizing various processes involved for a printing service to maximize productivity and profitability?
The Solution
A print management service that provides essential tools to those seeking printing services to make informed decisions and obtain timely prints while boosting the overall efficiency and functioning of the printing space for retailers.
Backstory
30 students crowding around 4 printers, anxiously waiting to collect their A1 size printouts for a submission that is due in 20 minutes. Each A1 sheet takes 3-5 whole minutes to print. Another 5 are arguing among themselves for the coveted first place for giving the print command. In this utterly chaotic environment, the Librarian struggles to maintain decorum, but to no avail. 12 of them ended up with a late remark and lost attendance for that lecture that day.
Almost all Architecture & Design school students rely heavily on printouts as they are not only used for submissions, but in almost all lectures for various discussions and critiques.
Printouts required for subjects every 1 out of 2 classes
Printouts required for subjects every 1 out of 3-4 classes
Timetable of an architecture school
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I constantly wondered about my peers in other architecture colleges who depended on nearby local printing shops from the beginning. How did they survive through all these years? Did they wake up at 5am just to be early at the printing shop to ensure timely submissions?
Students
I began my research with an objective to find answers to the following questions:
By tabulating each step with the amount of frustration /fulfilment a user feels, I was able to identify key points within the journey that required utmost attention and desperately needed some sort of intervention to optimize the process.
Students of Colleges with In- house printers (Top)
Students of Colleges without In-house printers (Bottom)
Collective Journey map of Students
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Individual Journey map of 6 participants consisting of 4 students from colleges with in-house printers and 2 students without in-house printers
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Please note,
Case 1: Students of Colleges with In- house printers
Case 2: Students of Colleges without In-house printers
Takeaways
In both cases, the entire journey of obtaining a printout consisted of multiple, repetitive steps.
A user specifies multiple details pertaining to his printout via email or calls to the print shop employee. This same information has to be inputted again in the system by the employee while giving the print command.
The responsibility to perform the ultimate action of giving a print command was not executed by the customer but by the employee of the shop.
This occurred in Case 2, and made the customer nervous as they were NOT the initiating authority and needed to rely on someone else.
Students were extremely concerned about the potential long queues and wanted the best output as quickly as possible with minimum expenditure.
In case 2, Students were forced to take their best guess regarding which shop had the least crowd before sending their print files to a particular shop and hope for the best.
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Next, I proceeded to understand the perspectives of different stakeholders involved in the process.
Shop Employees & Managers
Before I approached them, I began my desk research by understanding the dynamics of running and maintaining a printing service. I looked into reports compiled by Heidelberg and Darrel Amy to find answers to the following.
Key Learning
In most cases, press productivity in the average press room is between 20-40%. A large part of the potential isn’t being utilized. Improving productivity by around 20% lays the basis for increasing profits by around 50%.
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The data also shed light on a 6 strategies to direct future growth to ensure long term growth and success:
6 strategies to direct future growth:
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I proceeded to understand the degree to which people managing printing services were aware of, or had implemented certain strategies within their printing space. I visited 2 colleges with in house printers and 2 local shop owners.
Takeaways
When printing jobs increased exorbitantly, shop owners increased manpower to cope with the load.
These services are in high demand during specific hours and at a plateau during the rest of the day. Increasing manpower was a short term solution that was momentary and did not address the long standing problem.
For 3/4 owners, scaling up the business & enhancing their service meant investing in printers with greater speeds and better outputs.
All the interviewed individuals kept manual book records of inventory and did not utilize the collected data to direct future investment in the business
To Summarize
The root cause of the problem lay in the inability of students to predict the waiting time to obtain a print, leading to uninformed decisions based on guess work and probability.
Individuals responsible for running the printing service relied heavily on traditional and manual methods of operation that ultimately led to inefficiencies, slowdowns and a lesser output. These problems got magnified during peak hours
Design Opportunity
How might we empower students to make informed decisions to ensure timely submission of sheets while streamlining and optimizing various processes involved for a printing service to maximize productivity and profitability?
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After arriving at a statement I was happy with, I moved on to the ideation phase. At this point, I believed I had a good understanding of the functioning and role of each stakeholder. I did a storyboarding session with these individuals to validate what I had in mind.
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This sequence of events was well-received and the favourite aspect for the participants, was the idea of inputting print details oneself without relying on print shop employees to do so.
The larger idea of being able to print remotely was equally appreciated
Wireframing
I then began iterating several conceptual wireframes and highlighted certain useful elements to be further developed. I then fleshed out user flows using high fidelity wireframes keeping in mind the four types of users and their needs
Reflections &
Next Steps
Most of the features that emerged to address the needs of one of the most demanding groups ended up benefitting other individuals as well.
After testing the prototypes on different users and not just those with heavy daily print requirements, I realized that most of the features that emerged to address the needs of one of the most demanding groups ended up benefitting other individuals as well. Many of them appreciated the approximation tools and the idea of remotely initiating printouts.
However, in a context like India, multiple typologies of print shops exist, some partly run as stationary shops and others simply cater to large organizations and companies.
Understanding the different ways they operate could provide me with cues on how to further improve this app by adding additional layers of information
Looking to chat?
Get in touch with me on keenan11@uw.edu