Interview Findings for My Focus Area
Go around and ask Stanford students whether they are reading the announcements, flyers, emails, daily announcements pages, etc. Behice: Most of the time it is hard for her to follow every email and check her mailbox regularly. So she is having a close look at the subject line of each email and decides to read or skip for now. In most cases, if it is about an event or advertisement, she is not spending time reading it. She hates flyers and whenever someone put them into her hands, she is throwing into the trash after looking for two seconds. Masha: For her reading daily announcements or checking emails with full attention is really time-consuming as there is a lot going on. She is giving value to the emails that are coming from the residential advisors as she loves joining them and their events but most of the time she is not attending other events, even cannot hear about them. Flyers depend on the time that she sees, she might read it or just ignore it. Charlotte: There is huge information circulation so it is really hard to follow. Flyers are old-fashioned and emails are problematic. They are not good at choosing their audience and target. She said one day she received a soccer advertisement in her mailbox despite she is a girl and had never played soccer before. She likes attending school events but if she heard it from her friend, or via social media accounts. Otherwise, she missed a lot because she was unaware of the event beforehand. Mike: He hates flyers. For him, it is just paper waste and social media is a more effective tool. He likes attending school events that were announced on the social media account of the clubs or if one of his friends told him to join. But for people who are not using social media, he also confirms that it is really hard to take their attention and announce the coming events. No one reads flyers. Email is also personal and if we organize a small event, we cannot reach people that we do not know their email addresses. So it is not a useful tool for student-organized events at school. Victor: Fyler distribution is a waste of paper and time. Contributing to additional pollution by filling the trashcans. Not effective. He uses social media to follow up the daily events but since every student association or club has its unique Instagram page and they are not together on a single page, it is still hard if you do not want to miss anything and pay attention to all announcements. Link: She is busy with her studies and high workload so she even does not use social media. For her going to a school event is just if she sees it from an email or if someone invites her. She is not against flyers but does not have a reading habit. Social activities are %5 of her college life. Edmonds: Hate seeing events, and advertisements on his email box as he tries to use it more formally and for his business and academic-related matters. For him, flyers do a good job especially if someone is distributing one to one, instead of just leaving on to tables. Leaving papers on tables is just a paper waste and nothing more. Brandeis: Flyers are time-consuming and paper waste. Not effective and really old-fashioned. If someone is distributing flyers instead of looking at the page listening to that person is what makes it attractive so it could also work if that person just comes and speaks instead of holding dozens of papers in his hands. Melly: The most of attendants at their events are from social media announcements. That way they can also convey their questions. But she is not against flyers but for a more sustainable life, a new solution should be found. Rıdvan: For the Muslim Student Union events, most of the participants are coming from social media announcements. (I was also coming to Stanford from Berkeley for the events many many times since I have seen their posts on Instagram:D). So for him, social media has the power to reach
many people. Flyers are old-fashioned and in the near future, he believes that they will not exist. They are waste and not sustainable at all.