MIT Basement Laundry Room Huamn Use Analysis

Introduction

Most students residential halls have laundry facilities (typically there are more than 20 washers and driers installed) on the basement floor at MIT campus for student residents to use. Washing is $1 per cycle and drying is $1 pre cycle. Payment is either by using quarters or by swiping MIT ID cards at the machines in nearby the entrance of the laundry room. The standard laundry process for students in the residential are described as following: 1. Load clothes in an available washer and close the door. 2 pay the washers that you selected either by inserting quarters or swiping MIT ID cards. 3. Once the payment transaction is approved, the washer machine will be activated and you need to go to the washer to select washing options and press start. 4.Once the washing is done, take clothing out the washers and load into dryers 5. As with the washers, pay for the dying with the same payment method. Go to the dryer, select options and press start. 5.Once the drying is done, take the clothing out and pack them up. The entire laundry process can be regraded as complete at this point.

Experience

1. I spent about 5 mins collecting clothing that need to be washed tonight and put them in the basket. At 10:10pm I left my room which is located on the second floor, far southern corner of Sydney Pacific graduate residence while the laundry room is at the very northern side of this building on the basement floor. I have to take a 2-min walking to the elevator and then went down to the basement followed by another 1 min walking to the laundry room.

2. The peaking time for washing in the residential hall during the semester is between 7pm and 12pm. Certainly when I arrived in the laundry room, only very limited washers and dryers are available. I have no choice but to pick one that seems to be used by people a few seconds ago. This kind of making me feel uncomfortable. I successfully start the washer by following the instruction mentioned in the introduction part. The process involving delivering clothing to laundry room, having the washer get to work and going back to my room totally takes me around 7 mins.

3. The cycle time varies on the selected options. It takes 33 mins to finish washing my clothing this time as I chose the most common washing options. I set the alarm clock to remind me when I should I come down to transfer my clothing to the dryer. Unfortunately when I came down to the laundry room, I observed that all of the dryers are either under operation or waiting for people to take out the clothing that has been dried. I really hate this situation where I have to take out the clothing belonging to someone else in the idle machine and put them on a nearby desk. I did this again and repeat the payment method as I did with the washing machine. This process totally take me 8mins to finish up.

4. The drying process can be completed as long as 60 mins. I set the alarm clock again to remind me when the cycle is done. I quickly ran down to the laundry room and then bring the finished clothing back to room as soon as the clock warned me.

Summary of the laundry process and complaints

1. Total washing and drying cycle time combined are 93 minutes.

2. I have to travel between my living room and the laundry room threes time for the purpose of transferring and retrieving clothing. This painful process takes me around 20 mins to finish.

3. Technically if I can transfer my clothing as soon as one cycle is completed, I spend 113 mins to finish washing one batch of clothing one time.

4. However, Most of us wouldn’t be able to transfer clothing on time such that the usage efficiency of the machines will be lowered and it’s terrible during peak time because so many people are waiting for the idle machines.

Solutions

In order to minimize the travel distance and time between laundry room and living rooms, I suggested that each floor in the residential hall should have at least one laundry space with appropriate number of machines. Since many of us possible will forgot the cycle finishing time, it would be awesome if we have an app featured with the function of reminding as well as online payment. In this way, the usage efficiency will be significantly increased.

References

http://tang.mit.edu/resources/laundry/