a hub to foster communication between toilet cleaners and tenants

Executed over a 13-week timeframe in partnership with Keppel Land's Sustainable Urban Renewal (SUR) and Experience Design team, this project aimed to implement design methodologies into the practical business world. The brief was to develop more sustainable deliverables that meet customer expectations, reduce environmental impact, and contribute to the healthier well-being of space. The outcome included the development of a framework for a socially sustainable cleaning service, along with the initial solution based on the framework. The final presentation is available for viewing here, and our A0 posters can be viewed here.

Details

Tools: Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere Pro

Timeline: 13 weeks

Project type: 3-person group project in collaboration with Keppel Land

Skills: Corporate Strategy, Sustainability Planning, UX Writing, UX research, Workshop facilitation

Our presentation video

Project summary

"As a cleaning service provider, you are tasked to perform various activities throughout the building which may not match the expectations of the tenants and building managers"

"How will you approach delivering more sustainable outcomes to meet customers' expectations while reducing environmental impact and fostering a healthier well-being of the space?"

Each group was given different brief and a Business Unit mentor to work closely with. The BU would convey their specific business needs throughout the project. In our case, our BU mentor was the building manager, one of the three stakeholders. The other two stakeholders we had to address were the cleaning service provider and the tenants. Our BU emphasised heavily the fact his desire to uphold the Grade A commercial building reputation of Keppel Land.

Building manager

Our mentor and the stakeholder who gave the brief

Cleaning service provider

The cleaning supervisor and the cleaners

Tenants

Office workers from MNCs who occupy Grade A commercial buildings

* each group was a assigned a different brief and BU mentors.

Talktalk toilet: Text

Process

We identified the most useful questions to get the best information by hypothesising their possible interactions.

We have to work closely with our BU mentor for this project as he was the person who wants this project to happen. Our first step was to craft preliminary questions and draft a hypothetical user map of the stakeholders’ interactions with one another, clarifying and learning more as we go along the way.

We consulted our Business Unit mentor to understand the business concerns and needs

Firstly, we consulted our BU to learn more about the brief at hand and his rationale for setting such a brief. While we learnt a lot about the interaction between the stakeholders from his point-of-vie, it was only information from his perspective and we needed to experience and learn more first hand

Cleaners

We conducted both interviews and work shadowing

We spoke to both the cleaning supervisor and the cleaners. Additionally, we followed them shadowed them as they went about their tasks and organised a focus group discussion with the cleaners to discuss our observations with them.

Tenants

Without access to tenants from Keppel Bay Tower, we sought to interview tenants* from other Grade A commercial buildings, namely from these companies:

Google LLC,
Mitsui & Co
BW Offshore Holdings Pte. Ltd.

* the tenants only agreed to speak on condition of anonymity

We begin to fill in our stakeholder mapping as best as we can with all the information we gathered, mapping out how they interact with each other.

The initial stakeholder map

To make sense of our data, we detailed the interactions between the stakeholders from the perspective of the tenant’s user journey. While we believed that the main issue was with manpower allocation due to the new Outcomes-Based solution, our BU shared his vision where manpower issues could be solved with automation. Instead, he wanted us to focus on the customer satisfaction instead as customer satisfaction remains a perennial issue that he has not solved. Nonetheless, we kept the manpower at the bad of our minds.

The service blueprint includes the interactions of all stakeholders

Tenants are unaware of cleaners’ efforts, and cleaners are unaware of tenants’ expectations

Tenants expect perfect cleanliness because of the rental fee they pay for the reputation of a Grade A commercial building. Meanwhile, cleaners are unaware of the tenants’ expectations as they do not communicate much with the tenants, leading to the problem of having a misalignment of expectation between both parties.

With the direction from our BU, we refined our stakeholder map and noticed that there is no direct interaction between the tenant and the cleaner

The refined stakeholder map

Framework development

We began ideating by taking stabs in the dark with ideas. In doing so, we saw that our ideas tended towards 3 broad actions. These three broad categories give us an initial clue for our final solution.

Data visualisation solutions

Feedback-based solutions

Self-cleaning solutions

We took a step back to gain a more complete picture of our work and identify the key factors. Most importantly, we began to quantify customer satisfaction. To ensure that the team is not an echo chamber, we enlisted the other students, making sure that whatever we proposed made sense.

Based on our findings, we hypothesised a framework

In the end, we came up with this framework, where communication is about making salient the efforts of the cleaners and conveying the preferences of the tenants, while action is the ability for tenants to give feedback and receive acknowledgment from the cleaners. To validate our hypothesis, we tested 3 main things.

SDE4 in NUS:

High volume of users
Shared toilet environment
Students pay rental
High-ranking reputable university

Keppel Bay Tower:

High volume of users
Shared toilet environment
Tenants pay rental
Grade A commercial building

Due to having restricted access to tenants from Grade A commercial buildings, we conducted our tests in SDE4 in NUS as it bears a close resemblance to our target demographic.

Information Test

1. What is the most salient perimeter of the perception of cleanliness?

2. Knowing this, can we understand

We employed systematic incremental testing of 10ml to identify the threshold of the cleanliness.

We identified that dryness is one of the top factor in the perception of cleanliness, and anything above 60ml of water on the sink become indistinguishable in terms of satisfaction.

Acceptability Test

1. What data do tenants helps tenants see the toilet as clean?

2. Will showing this data help convey the cleaners' efforts and increase satisfaction?

Our A/B test showed that user are more satisfied when they know when the toilet was last cleaned.

We identified that the time the toilet was last cleaned is important to users, and knowing the time last cleaned increases understanding which causes users to be less demanding with their standards.

Follow-up Test

1. Would giving follow-up to feedback increase the satisfaction level?

2. What is the ideal time for a follow-up to take place?

While it is intuitive that a follow-up is appreciated, we learned that the optimal timing with our survey

While did not want to work on assumption that follow-up to feedback is important, our survey more importantly showed that there is an optimal time for the follow-up to occur, between 60 - 90 minutes.

Framework application

As this project is in collaboration with Keppel Land, we first sought the green light for our idea from our business unit. With the go-ahead given for both our framework and solution, we proceeded to workshop our idea.

We actively sought the approval of our Business Unit mentor

Workshopping

Based on our framework, we created Talktalk-toilet, our Minimum Viable Product, a board placed outside the toilet with different cards which can be used by both the cleaners and tenants serving as a hub to foster communication between toilet cleaners and tenants

We used a blank canvas to understand the nature behaviour of users

Board

Through workshopping the board with a blank canvas, we observed how users would naturally place the cards around a space and how big they expected the board to be. We used these behaviours to inform our board design.

Through systematic and targetted questions, we uncovered our user's preferences

Cards

Similarly, we workshopped the cards with the community and learnt about their preference regarding iconography, tone and phrasing, size, shape, and colours of cards.

Appreciation cards

Info cards

Response cards

Concern cards

Final 4 categories of cards

Learning from our acceptability test that users are more understanding and satisfied when they can see the cleaning timing, we enable cleaners to write when they last cleaned the toilet, and when they will come again to clean it.

Cleaners can write down their cleaning times

Users can raise concerns they have after using the toilet

Users can raise concerns by attaching red cards onto the board, allowing for other users to temper their expectations when entering the toilet.

Similarly, we workshopped the cards with the community and learnt about their preference regarding iconography, tone and phrasing, size, shape, and colours of cards.

Cleaners can respond to concerns raised

Cleaners can acknowledge and update the status of the concerns raised during every cleaning cycle, establishing follow-up to feedback and giving assurance to users.

Users can express appreciation for the cleaners after using the toilet

Users can express their appreciation for the cleaners' efforts by attaching green cards, giving positive feedback.

Fellow users can respond to the appreciation cards

Fellow users can attach reaction onto the green cards to show how much the community appreciates the cleaners' efforts.

"It is a way to communicate with the cleaner, who otherwise is hard to find."

Validation

"If there's a lot of red, I will avoid the toilet."

"When I see the board, I feel that my feedback does matter."

"Receiving the acknowledgement that the problem is rectified helps."

Our two criteria of validation:

How the users feel about their feedback (whether they feel that their feedback has been heard)
they feel about the information presented on the board, (whether it is sufficient for them to be satisfied)

This project was done in NUS DID in collaboration with Keppel Land. The team comprised of:

Jared Lim

Jonathan Lau

Vina Setiawaty