Ethnography Summary
Victoria Velasquez interviewed Henry of CES Property Management and then asked him to participate in a card sort.
Date: 3/6/17
Type: Interactive – Card Sort
Location: Victoria’s house in Irish Crossings
Team participants: Conducted interview alone
User Characteristics:
Owner of CES Property Management
Male, age 60s
Used to manage about 12 properties in a lower income neighborhood of downtown South Bend
Had bad experiences renting to low income individuals
About 12 years ago he got back into property management full time when Dublin Village was built
What is this person about – what drives him/her? Henry is driven by the trust that property owners place in him to rent out their properties and maintain them.
What is this person’s biggest point of pain? He feels like going through students’ applications for housing is a waste of his time.
Memorable quote from interview: “I had three properties set on fire.” “I had small claims files about a foot high that I was trying to collect on.” “I’m always one to give people a second chance.”
Top 3 Learnings:
- Henry can overlook past financial circumstances that might otherwise negatively affect someone applying for housing (i.e. history of bankruptcy, credit score, income). This is because most of the rent at his unit is paid by parents of ND students.
- Applicants with a prior criminal history, substance abuse history, or eviction history would automatically be disqualified from getting housing in Henry’s properties.
- The things that are deal breakers for Henry aren’t necessarily deal breakers for all property managers (i.e. Section 8 Housing vouchers).
Key Insight – (1) It’s less so that the property managers are weary of individuals with criminal history and more so that they worry what others in the living community will think. (2) Aside from any red flags (i.e. substance abuse history, registered sex offender, convicted criminal), Henry is basically looking to fill his units with students who will pay their rent every month.
Activities:
- Stopped at Victoria’s house during his daily routine of stopping by tenants’ units to fix any problems that arise.
- Answered my questions about his experiences as a property manager.
- Participated in a card sort made by Victoria.
- Separated cards with information that could be asked on a housing application into 4 piles: very important, semi-important, unimportant, and irrelevant.
- Asked a lot of questions to clarify what each pile meant.
Environment
- Monday afternoon around 3:30 pm in Victoria’s kitchen.
- Kitchen table was cleared off to give Henry space to sort cards.
- Quiet as Victoria stopped asking questions and let Henry think and sort through cards.
Interactions:
- Henry answered Victoria’s questions about property management.
- Victoria explained the card sort to Henry and demonstrated what to do
- Henry sorted through the cards. He did a lot of shuffling around with the cards and made a bunch of small piles before finally placing them into the four categories.
- Henry told Victoria that he could continue to help her throughout the project and to feel free to text him questions whenever.
Objects:
- Henry’s reading glasses
- Henry’s phone sitting on the kitchen table
- Cards written on regular paper that was cut into fourths
Users:
- Henry
- Victoria
- Victoria’s roommates