Item Tickets: Iterating suggested event processes

At Bridgewater’s first Repair Cafe organizers attempted to track the items coming in for repairs by asking volunteers to record incoming items in a list at the Welcome Table.

Observations:

• A lot of information is presented at the welcome table. It’s a lot for the guests to take in, especially their first time.
• When a line-up formed, the welcome desk volunteers began rushing or skipping steps in the intended process.
• Guests often left the welcome desk with only verbal instructions on where to go next and how to engage.
• When items were fixed, only the guest, the fixer, and any immediate onlookers, knew the repair was successful.
• By the end of the event, we had very little information to help us gauge the collective impact of our work.

Change of process:

Volunteers at the Welcome Table are now encouraged to record incoming items on “Item Tickets” rather than in a list. We’ve found after 3 events that the Item Tickets work well to address all the observations above, and enabled a numerical report (for what it’s worth) of event.

Suggestions for iterating on this Item Ticket resource:

• Add Check boxes (or a circle from list) for which repair station the item is being directed to. This will give the guests a written reminder of where they have been directed, and will make processing Item Ticket data post event more efficient.
• Add “Ticket number: ____”. Fillable by hand at each event to avoid unnecessary reprinting, this number will help gauge how many tickets are issued during the event, for a sense of realtime feedback to guests and volunteers, adding to the buzz and atmosphere.
• Add “Number of items:____” Even when the instruction is “one item, one ticket” sometimes folks bring multiple and it makes sense to just mark “(x3)” adding this element could make the instruction “one ticket per station” saving paper and clarifying the process for the welcome table volunteers.
• Add, “Please leave this Item Ticket with your Fixer, or at the Exit Table”. Printing instructions for the guests directly to the ticket could minimize the chance of guests taking tickets home, thereby loosing data .
• Add subtle branding (e.g. “NS Repairs” text) to the item ticket to help identify that this is a resource that can be freely replicated and increase the likelihood of a guest checking out the network and becoming an organizer themselves.