Problem

Our client was a multi-building co-working space based in Ann Arbor, MI that houses a professional community for over 60 businesses, most of which are growing biotechnology companies.

The company uses a paper filing system to store leases, invoices, maintenance requests, notes, build-out diagrams, etc. According to one of the employees, for all but the newest leases, (created and signed within the last six months), every relevant piece of information is made into a hard copy and stored in physical filing cabinets on site.

The problem with these physical files is that it is difficult to find a way to uniformly organize them so that they are accessible, easy to understand, and consistently updated.

“How might we help improve their file management?”

Methodologies

We used a qualitative research method called contextual inquiry to gather and analyze information about the file management problem of our client

Our method contained 3 main stages:

• Background Research

• Contextual Inquiry

• Qualitative Data Analysis

Background Research

We started off with an extensive background research on the problem. I wrote a background research report  to explore the concept of a “paperless office”. This report highlighted the reason, procedure as well as potential barriers for a business to transform into a paperless model.

Report - Analysis of the Procedure of Transforming into a Paperless Business Model

Contextual Inquiry

• We conducted contextual interviews with 6 employees of the co-working facility.

• We came up with 3 different interview protocols for financial managers, community managers and stakeholders according to their different job roles.

• Every interview was conducted by an interviewer and a notetaker together. I interviewed the community manager and the financial manager.

• We emphasized asking questions about specific instances of interacting with the filing and asking interviewees to walk us through these interactions rather than asking general questions about how they use the filing system.

• The employees gave us an office tour, which allowed us to better understand their working environment and observe the current file management system. At the beginning of every interview, we asked for permission to record the interviews and take photos of the filing system. 

Qualitative Data Analysis

For each interview, we took notes of all the important points. After each interview, we held an interpretation session where we went through our interview recordings and generated affinity notes for each minute of the Interview. We created over 500 affinity notes from 6 interviews. 

Then, we clustered the notes by by patterns that further led us to a high level theme. We chose to use physical sticky notes because we believed it would visually help us to understand the corelations between notes as we were trying to find the patterns. After repeatedly clustering and synthesizing the notes, we had our affinity wall.

The Affinity Wall

Key Findings

• File disorganization leads to individual filing systems

• Employees have important information that must remain tangible

• Employees prioritize convenience over systematic organization of communication

• Tracking changes across files is necessary due to overlapping job roles

Recommendations

• Clear definition of job roles

  Although the job titles were clearly defined, there were a lot of overlapping job roles in the organization, which led to confusion among employees as they were continuously tracking changes made by others in the same files. Clearly defined job roles are essential to streamline the workflow.

• Definition of file types and mapping with job roles

  The next step in the implementation of our solutions would be to systematically identify and define different types of files and map them to a specific job role within the company. Current employees already had a tendency to create individual filing systems to categorize files related to their own job roles. With the clearly defined job roles from step 1, we believe mapping file types with job roles on an organizational level will be successful.

• Create file organization protocols

  Considering the fast-paced growth of the organization, we recommended to create a centralized protocal for file management. This would not only streamline their current work flow and increase the filing efficiency, but also better prepare the organization for a full transition to digital files in the future.

  The organizational structure of the protocol should include four major elements: Identify→Store→Track→ Dispose.

  • ID Create identifiers that correspond to the file types for categorization

  • Store Organize a storage system for ease of access. File hierarchy need to be considered.

  • Track Changes to files need to be marked and communicated.

  • Dispose Set standards for disposal of redundant files