CI on Student Living Off Campus

I conducted a contextual inquiry on a female Williams College senior who lives in an off campus apartment on Spring street. The contextual inquiry was done in the individual’s apartment where I asked a couple of questions and observed her interactions with her roommate and immediate neighbors. At first I asked baseline questions about her experience obtaining her apartment with her roommate and her experience living in it. Some of these questions included the following: what was the process like of getting an off campus apartment, what was it like finding people to live with, what is your relationship like with housing authorities and how do you communicate with them, and what is it like communicating with your roommate/neighbors. I then told her that based on her responses to these introductory questions, I would ask for further information or observation.

I learned about various difficulties that this student had during her process of obtaining an apartment and has currently that our group had not considered beforehand. The first difficulty she had was communication with the owners of the apartment when her and her roommate were interested. The owners’ information was not easily accessible because she had to contact people who were then living in the potential apartment that she was interested in to refer her to the owners. All negotiation with the owners was done via email so there was no in person meeting with either her or her roommate to ever go over logistics. Even now, communication with a landlord who can do repairs in the apartment in an emergency is through text message, and communication with the owner regarding more higher level concerns is still via email. Another difficulty she had was not being able to see what the apartment looked like when she was interested in it because the owner whom she was emailing did not provide any photos of it. She also found it difficult to know what types of amenities the apartment came with because she was not told when communicating with the owners via email before signing a contract. The last difficulty that she had when getting the apartment was with knowing what the overall timeline and process is like from both Williams and the owners, both never explained what this process would look like for someone interested in renting an apartment for the first time. Another difficulty that I learned about other than those regarding the process of initially obtaining an apartment included communicating confirmation of monthly logistics with her roommate such as confirming that her roommate took care of the utility bills for a specific month.

Surprisingly, having a relationship with the half of the residents in her apartment building that she did not know as well did not seem to be a concern for her. This is something that our team hypothesized would be a hole in the housing culture that residents would desire to be filled, especially younger and newer residents. She had little desire to get to know these people but I wonder if the layout of her apartment building impacted her answer. Maybe the lack of a common space, such as a lobby or recreational room, created less of a desire for her to get to know all of her neighbors better. These types of spaces are more common in dorms, so I wonder how responses would differ between students who live on campus and the student I completed the contextual inquiry on.

In addition to what I learned by asking this student questions, I gained a better understanding of this students’ housing process, daily interactions, and monthly housing logistics through observation. She showed me the email chain with the owners, when first trying to obtain the apartment, and walked through each email while explaining what was happening in the process. Taking notes on this allowed me to pick up on parts of the process that she may have left out when just answering questions. I observed her daily interactions with her roommate while I watched them make dinner together. I also observed her casual interactions with her immediate neighbors as I watched her go across the hallway to their apartment to socialize and even ask for cooking materials that she didn’t have in her own apartment. And lastly, I watched her talk to her roommate about the amount of money that she owes her for monthly activities, and saw the way that she used a mobile app to send money to her. This is something that she forgot to mention when just answering questions beforehand. All of these observations were effective in gaining additional information that I could not obtain from the questions asked in the beginning of the contextual inquiry.

Overall, the student admitted that information regarding housing as someone planning to live off campus created various difficulties. The contextual inquiry seemed to be successful and I did not encounter difficulties establishing rapport or getting the information needed. My team’s plan for our next contextual inquiry is to gain more insight on the types of information that a student who lives in a dorm might handle, and learn whether or not they perceive handling this information as difficult (thinking about information regarding housing and also from everyday student life). It would also be interesting to do a similar contextual inquiry as this with a young person in the community who is not a Williams student but is also a first time renter. Protocol for these two inquiries will not change significantly but we will adapt it to the new environment and circumstances when necessary.