Understanding how people use dashboards and tools has provided Facilities Management (FM), Energy & Engineering’s Kiernan Salmon with a new perspective on the design and usability of products. As Kiernan understands more, she is able to build tools that give FM staff valuable insight that allows us to provide better customer service to the UC Davis campus. 

Developing websites and tools is a passion of Kiernan’s, and she began as an intern with Energy & Engineering during her undergraduate studies. Her first project was to develop the Campus Energy Education Dashboard. From there she wanted to increase energy awareness and feedback, which led to TherMOOstat and Trim the Waste. Kiernan is always looking for ways to work with the campus community and bring new ideas to the team! 

As a Product Developer, Kiernan manages websites including TherMOOstat, Campus Energy Education Dashboard (CEED), and Trim the Waste. These websites have evolved based on user feedback to provide UC Davis students, faculty, and staff with relevant resources to educate them on energy use on campus. These projects have also led to Kiernan’s involvement in developing tools for FM, including Utility Shutdown Notifications and future usability testing for the Tririga Workload Dashboard. With each project, Kiernan has learned how to effectively seek out customer feedback and use it to improve tools and websites. 

Usability testing is currently underway for CEED, a website that provides building-level data on energy use and energy savings projects. The goal of the testing is to understand how potential users interact with the website. Over the summer of 2021, student interns in Energy & Engineering developed interview protocols for user testing. They are now interviewing students about how they think about energy use on campus and their experience with the map on the CEED website. Using this feedback, the team will make changes that allow users to navigate the website more easily.   

It is vital to ensure that CEED is easy to understand for the students, faculty, and staff who use it. As a tool that provides a lot of information and data, it is imperative to make it accessible for those without a technical background. The way to do this is to interview and perform usability testing with students and staff. The team will use a similar testing process for other FM projects where user feedback is helpful. For example, a new tool is currently in development for Utility Shutdown Notifications. Kiernan and her team are interviewing shop supervisors to ensure the product is valuable.  

In addition, Kiernan is working with Dan Colvin on a potential expansion of the Tririga Workload Dashboard to include more vital information for technicians. Shop supervisors currently use the Workload Dashboard to track workload, and the potential addition could help technicians in the field. Kiernan plans to interview technicians about their work routines to better understand their day-to-day activities and obstacles or pain points. The hope is for technicians to provide real-time feedback for any Workload Dashboard additions so the product can be tailored to how they work.  

These projects demonstrate the importance of talking to customers and employees to understand their wants and needs. The goal is to move FM to a more customer and audience-oriented mindset when developing content and tools. One key challenge is finding participants for user studies, and volunteers are always welcome!  

Successful tools at UC Davis can improve internal campus operations and be shared with other UC campuses to help improve efficiency and share best practices. The concept behind TherMOOstat, a tool to report comfort on campus, has been shared with other UC’s to promote similar tools for their campuses. Other campuses also ask UC Davis for help to create personalized dashboards like CEED. As a result, Kiernan is busy developing products to support process efficiency and improvement within FM.