.gif)
The project was completed as part of my graduate course - INF1602 Fundamentals of User Experience. We had a 5 person team which collaborated both in-person and remotely over 4 sprints that were 2 weeks each. The project started with exploring the problem space and ended with mid-fidelity prototypes and evaluations.
Researcher, Designer
.png)
Students found themselves frustrated, and feared missing opportunities, events and other activities on campus given the lack of centralized information. They would often waste time searching through long lost emails, rely on the limited word of mouth, or resort to searching through Google which proved time consuming to the point of abandonment. Most preferred to get information from their peers and friends as opposed to passive communication like emails.
The key area of improvement was to quickly surface relevant & authentic information to the students. By bringing the information to the students, instead of having them seek it themselves would solve the high level problems of confusion, fear of missing out and wastage of time. Moreover, this platform could help social networking for students thereby hosting a place for like-minded individuals to get involved on campus together. We focused on the 'clubs & events' aspect of information for an achievable scope.
We devised a mobile device solution which focused on 3 key solutions.
- Enable students to become part of a community even before stepping on campus.
- Enable students to connect with like-minded folks without the usual (and awkward) icebreakers.
- Enable students to register for events without the need of cross-checking with their schedule.
We looked at different articles, blogs, data from EdTech surveys, discussions on the internet, excerpts from faculty websites & voice of student archives, including existing digital solutions to grasp the obstacles in this area.
Initial research findings were divided into 5 broad categories -:
- Thoughts about existing digital platform
- Need for a personalized experience
- Student barriers
- Preference for Active communication
- Poor Organization and Design of Existing Information
More detailed findings can be found here
We went ahead and created an interview script and a survey questionnaire to follow up and validate the themes identified from our secondary research.
For the survey, we were able to generate a total of 36 individual responses at the time of research analysis. A total of 10 participants were recruited for conducting user interviews. The participants recruited for the interviews included students from all three UofT campuses and a broad range of academic departments. They include domestic and international students in the age range of 23-32 who have some experience and expectation around getting more involved in campus life, and accordingly seeking information.
Research findings -:
- There is a positive correlation between having a social support network and a higher rating on campus life satisfaction
- Upper year students tend to be more satisfied with their campus life and access to campus life information than first-year students as well as alumni
- Students usually gather event information via emails, social media, and through peers
- Students face challenges in decentralized information
- Students think a central platform for all events, as well as mobile access, could increase their experience with accessing campus life information
We studied the correlations of various responses and came up with the following hypothesis to guide our design -:
Increasing social interactions among students at the University of Toronto will help grow one's support network of peers and increase the dissemination of relevant information to those networks.
.png)
Based on our research, we focused on 1 key persona -- a 1st year UofT student looking to get involved in an upcoming campus event. This would help us keep our problem statement aptly scoped.
We made a rough proto-persona using the secondary research, and then polished it after combining the interview & survey findings.
.png)
During the course of brainstorming, we decided to do away with the 'resources' part of information like accessibility accommodations, library resources & finance related information. We felt that there might be important implications (like legality & authenticity) which were better suited to a dedicated university source.
Therefore, we avoided adding noise to such already existing information and focused on connecting students to information about clubs, events & other happenings on campus.
To better understand Amber's present cognitive state, we created an Empathy map outlining her current emotions around seeking information.
.jpg)
.png)
It became evident that the struggle was real trying to navigate through lots of information.
We swore by 3 statements which would later guide our design decisions.
.jpg)
.png)
We did quick sketches of wild ideas that would solve the identified student needs.
.jpg)
Our big bet idea was to create a people-matching friend app that allows students to meet other university students with the same interests and seek social connections themselves.
.png)
Some absurd ideas included having the university give out free phones and buddying up with a professor - but these provided marginal gains and were not very impactful or feasible.
Finally, more feasible ideas with good impact (i.e. home runs) included
1. An event scheduler where students can enter their interests, availability, and import their course schedule, google calendar, etc. The scheduler would then show a road map of events around the student’s information and help them plan their activities efficiently. Moreover, the scheduler would remind the student of upcoming events, hence acting as a one-stop solution for social happenings on campus.
2. A concept like the sorting hat that sorts first year students based on their interests and put them into the same channel where they can chat, socialize around events and activities on campus, and form a friends network.
These 2 ideas ended up defining our application.
Having the top ideas in mind, we set forth a new, improved user journey depicting these ideas in action for Amber.
.png)
The new changes revolved around introducing a social + information networking platform (termed 'the service' in the above screens) to reduce friction for Amber, who having recently arrived on campus, wants to gather information about an upcoming event.
We stuck to a digital solution and discarded non-digital ideas to abide by the constraints set in the course.
.png)
As depicted by the above infographic, by putting our envisaged idea into reality we can see how it improves the stage of 'anxiety' and 'confusion' in the life of Amber. She is now rather curious and hopeful about exploring the platform which would kickstart her social life at campus, as well as form roots of a reliable information network. Moreover, she can retrieve information in an active fashion rather than battling the irrelevant overload.
&
EVALUATION
To pitch in our ideas to the course instructor and summarize the high level requirements before designing, we created compelling epics which satisfied key needs of Amber, and a logo (credit goes to Kyle) to make the app more appealing.
An interesting thing to note is that we chose a mobile app solution because our research indicated most students preferred to keep it handy for information seeking purposes instead of a computer or tablet that they would use when working/studying.
.jpg)
We ended up naming our app 'The Information Magnet' as a metaphor of attracting useful information, and further cutting down to 'Magnet'.
We created quick low-fidelity sketches to lay down our ideas tackling each of the hills.
Our key solutions resolved around an onboarding which would sort students into 'fields' or communities to form a friends network, icebreaker prompts while chatting to break the awkward silence, and a timeline view of events with the options to filter them like - 'non-conflicting with schedule', 'weekends only' to make event planning quicker.
We conducted usability testing on 5 participants and gathered qualitative data on the above mentioned 3 task flows - Onboarding to the app, interacting with other members in a field and registering for non-conflicting events together.
Some of the critical feedback revolved around confusion with naming (eg. "What does field mean?"), being overwhelmed with information about other events when viewing a particular event, etc. We addressed these changes accordingly in our mid-fidelity wireframes.
We fixed the initially discovered issues by renaming (example - 'Field' to 'Mag Field'), expanding the 'event details' page to include more information and removing the display of 'similar events' which covered a lot of space, adding more instructions on the usage of QR code before onboarding, and adding 'back arrows' for navigation.
Check out below some of the refined screens in the mid fidelity prototypes.
.png)
We conducted usability testing on 5 participants again to verify if the changes worked out. This time, instead of low-fidelity paper prototyping we used a clickable prototype and evaluated using observation, followed by a brief interview. This also helped us gauge quantitative data and user behavior like click trail efficiently.
Moreover, we were guided by high level research questions like - "Do the participants have the patience to finish all the questions in the onboarding?" and "Are the questions presented in the onboarding process exhausted to sort students into different mag fields?" to make it easier to analyze the feedback.
The issues identified were largely classified under 3 umbrellas.
1. Overall information architecture - For example, the participants picked up details on the overall screen designs and questioned the placement of components like the icebreaker prompts.
2. Functionality - For example, all of our participants felt confused about the icebreaker questions and expressed slight dislike towards using them.
3. Privacy - The participants were concerned as to who can send a message to another party, and if the event participation should be visible to all users in the field.
We then summarized the recommendations to fix these issues as our last deliverable.
.jpg)
For me, this was a rich learning experience because it was my biggest design project, and moreover quite a challenge working with 4 other people. I'm glad we followed 2-week sprints which resonated with my work experience at Amazon, allowing us to modularize and deliver substantial work timely.
It was great to see the realization of what seemed like crazy ideas at the start to an implementable design. I'm excited about how the next version of this would turn out to be, and would perhaps create a high-fidelity prototype when I get the chance.
Talking about the experience, on the positive side, I can see my collaboration skills levelled up through this project. Sharing work with others and reviewing each others work proved beneficial for it fostered new perspectives.
For the negatives, it was hard to stick to a schedule given most of my team members worked full time, but hey, we made it till the end despite small hiccups!
Until next time.
