User Needs: Before discussing user needs, it would be helpful to understand who the users are (e.g., undergrad MIT students ranging from ages 17-22, men and women, etc.) One way to bring the user needs to life is to create 2-4 user personas that group together common characteristics, experiences, preferences, and attitudes learned from the people you interviewed and / or observed. There is opportunity to dig deeper into the user needs instead of accrediting differences simply due to variances in preference. Asking "why" 5 times (or more) can help get to the true user needs. Why does one user do laundry every week while the other does it every 3-4 weeks? Is it because the first user plays sports and has to wash her sports outfits regularly? Why do they separate or not separate their darks and whites? What makes it difficult to transport their laundry--is it because elevators are far away, they overload their laundry baskets, etc.? Do they look up online listings on their phone or laptop, and how is the app useful or not useful?

User Experience: Great job on detailing the three main steps to the laundry experience and including photos of the machines and website!

Summary: The summary is a helpful recap of the key issues. I like how concise it is.

Redesigned: The redesign does a good job of addressing the pain points you discuss in the user experience. I like that you propose both technical and non-technical solutions.

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The analysis is very well written and concise with the assignment proposal. The overall content is able to provide the reader with an outstanding amount of details and yet keeps it from losing its clearance and objectiveness. All of these qualities, combined with a topic of choice that indeed has quite some potential, corroborate for a very good analysis. However, here are my two suggestions for improvement: 1) In the "user needs" section, try to give user testimonies in order to support conclusions. This will give more credibility to any statement or conclusion you might have from there on. 2) Even though this wasn't specifically required for the assignment, one big improvement would be to add some kind of visual concept of your redesign proposal. Seriously, this helps a LOT the reader to understand and visualize what you are proposing.

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I can see that the current design of the laundry room system has many issues and can easily become frustrating for people living in Simmons Hall.

As my first suggestion, I can say that in addition to what you proposed, it would be great if the website can suggest the closest laundry room available and the path to it to the residents. I can imagine it might be very hard for someone who is new to building to find the laundry rooms and closest paths to them.

I like your "claim" idea and as an addition, I was thinking that it would be great if the card reader recognizes the person, when they are paying by TechCash and sends them an email once their cycle is finished. It has happened quite a lot to me that I start a cycle and I forget about it as I become busy with studying. This will help washing/drying machines become "available" for the next person very quickly after the cycle finishes.

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We had a similar system at my undergrad dorm, and I had all the same issues. Especially annoying is the issue with wet or dry clothes that have completed the cycle, still in the machine. I think you accurately captured these issues by gathering data from your own experience and that of others. I thought your idea to reserve machines for a short window was especially insightful. Very thorough overall.

You may also want to consider a redesign of the layout of the rooms or the locations within the buildings to better suit students needs, but I understand that was out of scope for this project.

Also, I might suggest talking with someone from facilities or student life who may be responsible for this infrastructure in some way. They may have an interesting perspective on why things are they way they are.

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User experience: It would be helpful to see photos or videos of someone going through the steps and experiencing the challenges that you mentioned.

Summary: It may be more clear to present this as a user needs list in a table or in bullet form.

Redesigned: I am curious as to how you would redesign the website and signage. Seeing visuals--even rough concept sketches--would help the viewer understand your vision.

Overall: I appreciate having the tabs to navigate through the pages. The site is consistent across the pages, and the layout is organized.

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Differently from the analysis content, I wasn't very happy with the content presentation. I didn't have any particular clearance issues, so nothing to worry about that. But when it comes to the visual presentation of the content in itself, I do have two main complainings: 1) Give your paragraphs more line spacing. Narrow line spacing makes reading way harder than with proper line spacing. PS: also, be careful not to make it too large - so that your text becomes exhaustively long. 2) As a general rule of thumb, avoid eye-catching background colors. Backgrounds should stay - as the name properly suggests - in the back, faded, unnoticed. Whenever you choose to use a colorful background you run into the risk of driving your reader attention from the content to marginal unwanted features of your webpage.

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The website design is generally good and one can follow the story. Nice job on that!

I think it would be great if you could have some sketches or drawings in the "Redesigned" sections and avoid text as much as possible. Having drawings are very helpful to convey what you are think of.

This is a minor issue but I think addressing it can improve the website significantly. The spacing between the lines is small and as a result, it is hard for the reader to follow a line. It happened a few times for that I missed the beginning of the next line.

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I like the flow and layout of the site. The side bar table of contents with direct links provides convenient structure and navigation. The end of section links to the next section guide the reader through the analysis and are also very smart. Also the buttons have a cool animation to show you are hovering over them!

I found the gray title a bit hard to read against the purple background. Also, the lines of text seemed a bit close to one another and i often lost track of the line i was reading. Also, I think the large blocks of text could be broken up more with photos or other graphics. Multiple paragraph sections can be intimidating for today's ADD readers.

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