Maxine Tzeecheen Yuan | UXR: Contextual Inquiry/Interviews

Background and Goals

Furrever Félicité is a non-profit cat and kitten rescue organization that I am part of; they are largely comprised of Taiwanese immigrants. During my time at Furrever Félicité since June 2020, there have been several disputes or discourse. The founder has diplomatically resolved conflicts, but they were still reoccurring. Additionally, there was no collective or transparent way to manage the medical status and information of over 30 kittens.

As a user researcher, I decided to take the initiative to observe another cat/kitten non-profit rescue in LA - a cat café (anonymized as La Café du Chat) - to see how other organizations help manage flow of information and improve trust, camaraderie, and belonging.

La Café du Chat is a cat cafe that partners with a different cat/kitten rescue. "La Café du Chat helps foster cats and kittens for adoption.
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Explorative research goals:

How does camaraderie play its role in the management and flow of information in an organization?
Furthermore, how does that affect the work culture and its environment?
Last but not least, how does culture play an issue in information flow, information management, and technology?

Methods

To carry out this research project, I utilized a variety of qualitative research methods:‍

Qualitative Methods

Contextual Inquiry/Interviews with workers
4 observational sessions, each over 4 hours per session
1 in-depth phone interview with the founder

Analysis

Qualitative coding/annotations on transcripts
Transforming field jottings into field notes
Affinity diagramming to map out data patterns

Data Synthesis

Data visualization via infographics and work models

Figure 1: Affinity diagram of qualitative data and observational sessions

Crucial Insights

Navigation and simplification of information management is crucial - something that La Café du Chat does extremely well. On the other hand, Furrever Félicité currently lacks a coherent and transparent system to collectively track the status of each kitten. This also includes a comprehensive list of all members and their roles and responsibilities; new members were often not properly introduced to all veteran members, making it difficult to come collaborate (or as some others say, "winging it.")

My primary findings at La Café du Chat were used to compare to the current system, or lack thereof, that Furrever Félicité has; making the comparison helps clarify how Furrever Félicité can improve camaraderie, trust, and information management. These findings also include navigating a complex system of information streams, the renewal of energy amongst workers (eg. work can be monotonous, but it is still fun), and the importance of having shared values.

My secondary findings indicates the subtle implications of each primary finding. For instance, the "renewal of energy" amongst workers makes it so that not all workers need to meet each other to collaborate. Yet despite never meeting each other, they still work well because their spirits are always high.

Models that demonstrate findings

Fig. 2 (right): a small thumbnail of The Flow Model, demonstrating the flow of information amongst roles, responsibilities, and people.

Fig. 3 (most right): a thumbnail of The Cultural Model which is shows breakdowns amongst different people and their relationships.

Research Impact

Strategic Impact

This track of research has opened up a log on not only how Furrever Félicité can improve but also how other small organizations can improve as well.

In Taiwan, most users are mobile-only users; desktops/laptops are not commonly utilized. Stakeholder has seen how communication technology, such as Slack, and cloud technology can help organize information and work better collaboratively.
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Stakeholder Collaboration Impact:

Stakeholder Furrever Félicité has a gateway to understanding how other rescues and collaborations operate in the US for non-profit cat rescue; because Furrever Félicité is largely comprised of Taiwanese immigrants, there is a barrier that prevents them from gaining insights.

UXR has helped accomplish other areas of impact that it traditionally wouldn't have - such as work culture, camaraderie, trust, and belonging in a small organization.

Figure 4 (above): thumbnail of The Collaboration Model to help organize/visualize how workers manage information for all felines at La Café du Chat

Reflections and Learnings

Observational skills from art: being an artist doesn't just mean being able to draw; it is being able to see. In this project, I learned that my observational skills that I acquired through a number of art classes have greatly helped me in my observations by noticing the subtlest of details - such as the twitch of an eyebrow to the small curve of a smile.
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Culture and technology: Furrever Félicité is a kitten rescue primarily comprised of Taiwanese people located in LA county. People in Taiwan, however, are not adept in using desktops/laptops, cloud platforms, or apps such as Slack. They are mobile-first and often on-the-go meaning the learnings from this project can be difficult to apply.
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Stakeholder scheduling: it would've been ideal to research/observe another non-profit cat/kitten rescue, but their sporadic schedule made it difficult to not only get in touch with them but also properly schedule interviews/calls (kitten season makes them incredibly busy).