Observation Task: Bus Stop in front of Geology Building. Time 5.30 PM
Method- Inanimate (observing mobile phones used by travelers)
Summary-
The bus stop always had about 3-7 people. It was one of the busy times of the day since lots of people go back home from offices. At about 5.30, there are 4 people at the bus stop. Three of them (1 male 2 females) are using their smartphones while the fourth person is looking around waiting for the bus. Two of them (blue shirt male and the female) have earphones plugged in. All four of them leave in about 5 mins by 2 different busses and a couple of young men arrive at the bust top at 5.37. Most of the people seem to be using the double map app on their smartphones since they arrive just a few minutes before the arrival of the bus. This is only possible with the apps because busses are almost always running late by 5-10 minutes. Both the recently arrive young men keep on checking their smartphones in between talking to each other, perhaps just checking on some notification. Of the 12 people observed, 7 of them who were solo travelers had their headphones on. People in duo or group tend not to have headphones plugged in. 3 of the passengers had their IU ID card hooked up to the back side of their smartphones so that they can show it easily to the driver. Also, a sticker of some kind was found on one of the covers, probably an IU sticker but couldn’t get a closer look. None of the passengers spent more than 10 minutes waiting for the bus. The two young men earlier mentioned stop talking after about 4 mins (5.41ish) and use their phones until their bus arrived at 5.45. 9 out of the 12 passengers took out their phones at least once while waiting- maybe to check the time or notification, I don’t know. By 5.45 3 more guys came running in just in time to catch the bus. In the last 5 mins, 3 more passengers arrived at the stop. Two of them were young solo passengers and they used their smartphones at all the time they were at the stop. I stopped my observation at 5.50 and became a fellow passenger myself.
Also, here is a graph I plotted for Tableau assignment:
A sample graph plotted on Tableau