Furniture satisfaction survey
Kathryn Crowe
Gardner, Susan J.
Hi Kathy,
We did a furniture survey at LMU as part of a larger study of our Information Commons. We published the results in EBLIP-the furniture survey questions are in Appendix D (page 35).
Sent: Wednesday, August 8, 2018 12:01:23 PM
To: Library Assessment Discussion List
Cc: William Cook
Subject: [ARL-ASSESS] Furniture satisfaction survey
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Jennifer Giordano
User Experience & Assessment Librarian
Brandeis University Library
Joyce Chapman
Great question Kathy,
I’ll second Jen on flip charts or moveable white boards. We often use these to get casual feedback from folks using a space and combine the feedback with other methods of assessment. If you are able to do it with test furniture as Jen did, I’ve also worked places where that worked really well. We’ve done this with both standing desks and FitDesks in the past couple years. We basically just ask something like “What do you think of the FitDesks? –Library staff.” That leaves it open to whatever type of feedback people want to provide. We photograph the flip page or whiteboard before erasing it, then type up the comments to save.
We also perform observational studies of how furniture is used. We like to combine methods that elicit patrons’ ideas about how they use furniture with direct data collection about how they use our furniture/spaces. The two don’t always match upJ We typically use the open source tool Suma on an iPad to gather information while walking around a space (such as which types of furniture people are using, activities that are happening with different furniture, whether standing desks are being used in a standing or sitting position, etc.) Once you’ve got Suma installed -- which might be more trouble than it’s worth to some people -- it makes observational data collection on furniture and space usage really simple. Additionally it timestamps everything and has built-in visualization tools so you can see heat maps on high usage times of the year/month, you can see which hours of the day had what percent of usage, temporal and comparative usage of different furniture types, and more. I’ll include a screenshot of a furniture-related data collection project in Suma below.
If the furniture is in an enclosed space, we sometimes use paper feedback forms. We have a few wooden lockable boxes that hold papers and pens on one side and have a plastic sign holder on top, with a slit to drop your feedback form. We’ve gotten feedback on furniture (among other things) in targeted spaces such as our Graduate Reading Room, Graduate Research Commons, and Prayer and Meditation Room this way. We ask just one or two simple questions, and these are always anonymous.
We also include survey questions related to furniture on our biennial user satisfaction survey, which goes out to thousands of students. For example, we typically have a question about the extent to which the variety of furniture options available at each specific library location meets patrons’ needs, as well as a question asking which of the following expanded services would most benefit the patron, with one option choice being about more/different furniture and a space for them to optionally write in details about what furniture they want. This year we received 553 furniture comments and coded them all into categories to assist in furniture purchasing decisions in the future. You can see the furniture feedback we got in this Tableau dashboard (apply the “Limit by question” filter and choose the furniture question, the text of all the comments is at the top and then there’s a bar chart of the coded furniture categories below that. You can also filter the furniture requests by demographic groups, such as grad or undergrad, etc.). The quantitative survey questions related to furniture are in this dashboard.
Sometimes we also send end of the year surveys to patrons who have access to specialized spaces within the Libraries. These are not anonymous and can include questions about furniture. We are trying to make sure these folks are all told that we expect them to complete an end of year questionnaire in return for having been granted access to the space or service. Examples include students who have carrels, lockers, or access to our Graduate Research Commons.
Carrels aren’t precisely furniture, but here’s something very simple we recently did to try and identify how frequently the assigned carrels were being used since we don’t have swipe card data: we printed a bright orange piece of paper that said something like “move this paper when you come into your carrel (library staff are trying to track carrel usage)” and we slipped them under the carrel doors, partially sticking out. Once a week for the next four weeks we went around and counted how many pieces of paper were still sticking out so we could analyze how many carrels had been used at least once within one week, two weeks, three weeks, etc. We noted down the carrel IDs that weren’t used after a month and I recommended that ADS staff follow up with those people to see if they still needed the carrel or it could be reassigned.
I am happy to share more info about Suma or digital versions of any of our surveys if you’d like.
Joyce
Screen shot of a Suma data collection project:
Screenshot of Qualtrics biennial survey matrix question including data about furniture
Example of a paper questionnaire one of our students recently conducted in a specialized space
