Health & Safety Interventions Hospitality Workers

UX Researcher | Team of 3 | 2023

Srishty Bhavsar, Jamie Espinosa, Bea Maggipinto, Alex Wang, Harvey Zheng

What is this project about?

Building from previous work, I took part in an exploratory study that aims to make sense of the health & safety regulatory space to try and identify gaps for technological interventions. This study is in service to hospitality workers who face an increasingly high risk of Musceoskeltal disorders (MSDs) in their day to day job.

The research conducted within this project aims to understand the day-to-day nature of hospitality work, as well as understand how regulations affect the industry, well-being, and safety. Furthermore, this project, delves into the evolving realm of hospitality automation with a focus on empowering union members to adapt alongside new technological advancements such as Alghormitic Management systems (AMs).

***It is important to note the scaffolding of this project. This research project is being coducted by Carnegie Mellon University whom is working alongside Unite Here! (workers' union), University of Illinois, and Michigan Sate University. During my involvement, the project maturation stage was of 3 years.

Building on Previous Work

We began with familiaring ourselves with the context needed to frame the problem. We reviewed previous research on AMs within the Hospitality Industry, Hazards within the industry, MSD, and a dwindling workforce. Additionally we reviewed previous transcriptions of interview protocols that were used during interviews of Hospitality Workers to aid in the framing of our conceptual model.

Previous Research on AM's in the Hospitality Industry

What Was Parsed?

It was important to parse through as much imformation about the health & safety regulatory space as we could find to get a good glimpse at the crux of the problem.

Throughout this process we researched instances relating from MSD solutions in the workplace to OSHA requirements and legislation. Within this stage of the study, the main focus was parsing as much information as we possibily could relating to the domain.

Precedent Analysis of MSD Solution Space

Health & Safety in the Hospitality Industry Literature

Regulatory Space in the Hospitality Industry

Formulating New Questions. . .

By parsing through a multitude of information, there were a couple of blaring questions that we wished to address:

What data types and information do workers need to know to enforce H&S?
What role does the Union (Unite Here!) play in enforcing health & safety alongside OSHA?

Interviewing Stakeholders

With a more contextualized framework, we were now able to continue our interview processes. Specifically with Unite Here! the hospitality industry union. We went into our interviews to understand the role the Union plays within the day-to-day health & safety space.

In addition to interviewing Unite Here, I took place in working alongside the University of Illinois's efforts in interviewing GRAs (housekeepers) to try and understand their relationship with AMs and their day-to-day work practices. I was also allowed to parse through previous interviews with GRAs and recode them to provide qualitative data surrounding H&S.

Analytic Memos from Interviews

A New Lead

Following our interviews we learned valuable information regarding Unite Here's involvement in the passing of new regulation within California. In order to implement new and effective technological interventions, we needed to understand this regulation that was placed to prevent injuries within the workplace. This regulation needed us to review two main new components:

Petition of Regulation 3345 of California
Passed Regulation 3345
The Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention Program (MIPP)

Outlining Stakeholder Responsibilities as per the MIPP

Identifying the Problem(s)

With more knowledge under our belt, we were beginning to identify where the underlying problem was.

At this stage of reframing, we understood a couple of facets relating to Health & Safety within the Hospitality Industry:

There are multiple stakeholders (Union, GRAs, and Managers).
Consistent communication between stakeholders is difficult.
Due to the sheer amount of regulations, enforcing safe and effective practices is difficult for managers to do.
GRAs (Housekeepers) are often not knowledgeable enough within the regulatory space to be able to self-enforce best safety practices.

Our Thinking - Synthesis

Affinity Diagrams

With so much information in our heads from all of our research, we began the synthesis process with affinity diagramming

This provided us with a flexible affordance to outline key concepts from transcriptions, interviews, and literature to begin to outline everything and form early connections.

Key concepts at this stage involved:

Stakeholders
Dangers within the workplace
Regulation barriers
Technology's role in all of this

Sound Sequencer with Associatied Sounds

Whiteboarding. . .Lots and Lots of Whiteboarding . . .

Lots of our time was also spent whiteboarding, trying to understand connections, and building an early version of a conceptual framework.

With so much information gathered, this step was crucial in framing our thinking, and truly evaluating the relationships and needs across all stakeholders.

The Problem at Hand

As a result of the synthesis of our research, we developed a series of "How can we..." questions to better align our goals as well as those of the Union, and Housekeepers (GRAs).

How can design & technology support GRA input to promote high-road Health & Safety practices?
How can we provide housekeepers with H&S information to fully understand existing H&S regulations?

Conceptual Framework

Previous Research on AM's in the Hospitality Industry