This week, team KTRU gained two major insights after immersing ourselves into problem. Our problem was rooted in both human and systematic issues.

Human-Centered issue

• Vinyl Care
  • Fragility of vinyl
  • Special management for vinyl
• Training Process
  • Generation to generation passage of using/familiarity with vinyls while shadowing DJs
  • Lack of hands on experience
  • Ineffective training (information overload, shadowing occurs during shift)
• DJs’ approach to vinyl
  • Fear to use or play vinyl under time constraint and live on air

Systematic issue

• Organization
  • Album reviews are critical to DJs
  • KTRU is reorganizing (“scooting”) specialty CDs and vinyls to general section
• Accessibility
  • Ease of access is big when choosing music to play
  • Many CDs and vinyls are not accessible to those with disabilities

During Reframe, we decided to delve into a more human centered issue, specifically, “training.” However, we also decided to keep organization (systematic) issue in our mind since whatever change KTRU is making in their organization system can affect training process.

Based on these, we came up with a revised HCW statement that takes in mind our insights from immerse: 

“How can we help DJs become more comfortable with properly handling, managing, and playing vinyl?”

We also created a user persona for who would use our solution.

• • • Name: Random Student
    • Sophomore at Rice
    • A year in KTRU
    • Interests
      • Music/music exploration
    • Has an eclectic music taste
    • Within genres wants something is unexpected/innovative
    • Interested in vinyl
      • Open to different music, and therefore open to different mediums
      • Scared to play vinyl
        • Could cause dead air (time where nothing is playing)
        • Could damage the vinyl
      • Have a minimal understanding of vinyl
        • Know how to sue it theoretically, but are nervous to do it hands on

We came up with some measures of success for our project.

• Short term
  • DJs play vinyls 5% more of the time
• Medium term
  • Have KTRU DJs collectively report being comfortable/open to vinyl usage during their set
• Long term
  • KTRU DJs on average play 25% of their music from vinyl during their sets

In order to get some measures of success, we need quantifiable metrics for which we can test our solution against and craft our solution around. Therefore, Taylan, Irene, and Yunmin created a survey that asks DJs’ basic information, the average number of songs from vinyl they play during their set, and their comfort level to use/play vinyl in both quantitative and qualitative measures.

At the same time, Melissa interviewed with Jazz DJ and Toprak interviewed with Music Directors in order to gain further insights on their experiences with KTRU.