Background and Design Question

Shortly after the University of Washington implemented a return to in-person classes in 2021, many students, myself included, returned to UW’s campus for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic converted UW’s classes to a remote format. I realized I had taken public recreational spaces on UW’s campus for granted prior to switching to remote learning. As a semblance of normalcy started returning to the world during the pandemic, I wanted to understand how public game spaces could serve as an effective beacon for community and consider how I can help my fellow students appreciate them. In one of my classes, I was encouraged to experiment with a variety of user research methods to solve a problem. As such, I pursued an exploratory project to understand how these spaces could fit the needs of a university population that included many students that had never used them because of the pandemic. To direct my efforts, I considered the following design question: “How can we appeal to student users’ needs in public game spaces to attract greater usage?” 

Observational Field Study

To begin my research, I performed an observational field study where I spent half-hour segments observing how people interacted with various public games spaces on UW’s campus, such as HUB Games and Area 01. I made an effort to avoid being bothersome so as to avoid influencing the environment and repositioned every once in a while. I took notes and photos during my time there and used these to help analyze and reference trends I observed. In doing so, I noticed that the vast majority of the site’s visitors came to these locations in small groups and that these small groups generally spent more time there. I also noticed that, while certain amenities were popular attractions, many items were simply ignored. Some of these, such as muted TVs, were more passive items, while others, such as the air hockey table in Area 01, were activities that I didn’t observe anyone partake in while observing. Granted, I spent a limited time at each site, and this was not always a consistent trend (for example, ping pong table usage was varied depending on location). However, it became a crucial takeaway for me to understand there was a strong trend in who was visiting these spaces–small groups of two to three college students. 

Interviews

My next step involved researching three individuals I met during my times in these spaces. Ideally, I would have preferred to interview more, but I was limited on time and resources. To recruit these participants, I returned to these spaces and offered a modest gratuity for them to schedule an interview with me. Afterwards, I transcribed recordings of these interviews to reference for quotes for a class report (not included here due to confidentiality agreement). The interview participants chose to underscore the importance that the public game spaces’ convenience held on their willingness to visit, citing their proximity to where they live and the affordability of various activities as strong factors. The participants validated that they viewed the public game spaces as primarily social spaces to spend time with friends and that there was an expectation that other people will be people they know as well. 

Survey

I followed up my interviewing with broader survey work to more strongly identify how people valued these spaces. I used snowball recruiting to identify UW students who used these public game spaces, asking people in classes, on the HUB Games Discord server, and personal connections to get responses and find more eligible individuals. While my limited time and resources led to an unfortunately small survey sample subject to convenience sampling, I was still able to identify some trends. For example, the majority of respondents lived in the UW dorms, and the next largest group lived nearby in the UDistrict. While it’s likely true that much of the university’s student body lives near campus, it was certainly significant that the dorms received significant representation given that some of these game spaces existed within dorm buildings. Similarly, I saw strong trends that indicated that students visiting these spaces valued them as social spaces, even if they occasionally struggled to turn them into such experiences. 

Insights and Next Steps

While this project was conducted as a class project where I didn’t have the power nor responsibility to implement any structural change to UW’s public game spaces, I still used my research insights to map out actionable responses to findings. For example, I suggested creating promotions focused around students’ ideal group sizes to increase affordability as a form of accessibility and promote amenities that saw less use, such as a bowling alley I rarely saw get used. I also suggested events marketed to help individuals meet new friends after returning to campus so that more students could find people to visit with in a group in the future.