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Squirrels App Project
Course: Information Design Studio II: How to Design
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Project Objective: Identify and explore a problem area, generate ideas for solutions, create prototypes and gather feedback, and improve the prototype based on feedback and learnings gathered throughout the process. Remain focused on the target user and their needs during the entire design process.
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Group Size: 4 Members
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Our group decided to tackle the issue of a plethora of sources for U of T-related events, such as posters, bulletin boards, and Facebook for example, which can make it difficult and time consuming for students to sift through and find events. We want to make it easier for students to find events they might be interested in, so that they may become more engaged in the U of T community and ultimately gain a richer social experience while attending U of T. To fully understand our chosen problem area and develop a solution, we went through the following design phases: Discovery, Interpretation, Ideation, Experimentation, and Evolution.
Discovery Phase
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To maintain clarity of the problem we aimed to solve, we first wrote a concise problem description. Next we worked on gaining a good understanding of our client, fellow university students, by conducting online surveys as well as interviews, asking them about their experience in finding and registering for U of T-related events. At this point, we concentrated on two types of target users: event seekers and event promoters. We conducted 4 interviews with event seekers, 3 with event promoters, and attained 65 survey responses from a variety of users. For a deeper understanding of our problem area, we conducted literature reviews and looked at scholarly articles about university-related events or university students' social lives. We found that student engagement at many universities is lacking, and that online platforms that help students connect more can be very beneficial to the student community.
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Tools Used:
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U of T's library's scholarly article database (to find scholarly articles related to our problem area)
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Google Forms (to conduct online surveys of U of T students)
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Google Document (to collaborate online as a group)
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My Role: Brainstorming survey and interview questions, conducting interviews, synthesizing and writing the Problem Description, and assisting in the literary review research and analysis.
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Skills Developed: The ability to conduct in-depth research on a problem area with the purpose of designing a solution, as well as the ability to invent effective survey and interview questions.
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Design Artifacts:
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Interpretation Phase
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After collecting information from U of T students regarding their experience with finding and posting events, we sifted through all of the survey and interview data and pulled out key points from people's responses, which we organized into Affinity Diagrams. We created two Affinity Diagrams and two Personas, one for event seekers and one for event promoters. At this point we realized that time constraints would limit us to focusing only on one type of user moving forward, and we chose to focus on event seekers since we primarily wanted to solve the problem of event finding at U of T. From the data we had collected from event seekers, we learned that they indeed have a difficult time finding events and many expressed frustration with the lack of a social life at U of T. We had created our event seeker Persona based on these responses, and developed an As-Is Scenario, outlining the current journey that our Persona, a U of T event seeker named Shannon, currently goes through when looking for events. This helped us to identify the most troublesome pain points for U of T event seekers.
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Tools Used:
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Photoshop (to create sticky notes and organize them into Affinity Diagrams)
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Xtensio (to create Personas)
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Google Sheets (to create our As-Is Scenario)
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My Role: Creating the Persona and Empathy Map for the event seeker as well as synthesizing and summarizing the data analysis. (The rest of the work was divided among all group members.)
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Skills Developed: The ability to interpret collected data and creating a Persona, Empathy Map, and As-Is scenario based on that data.
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Design Artifacts:
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Affinity Diagram
Persona
Empathy Map
As-Is Scenario
Click on the images for a larger view.
Ideation Phase
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We knew that students like Shannon (our Persona) needed a way to easily sort through all available U of T-related events to find the ones related to their interests, to see if their friends were attending an event, and to register quickly and easily. Our group brainstormed a large variety of ideas to meet the needs of these students and we organized these ideas based on how much they would help event-seeking students, and how feasible they were. We concluded that the most feasible and impactful solution would provide a curated list of events based on the student's interests, a quick event registration process, and a link to the student's U of T credentials.
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Tools Used:
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Google Docs (to collaborate online as a team)
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My Role: Summarizing the users' needs and brainstorming solution ideas. (The rest of the work was divided equally.)
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Skills Developed: The ability to effectively share, develop, and organize ideas with fellow group members.
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Design Artifacts:
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Ideas
Prioritization Grid
Click on the images for a larger view.
Experimentation Phase
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With our ideal solution in mind, we created a To-Be Scenario for Shannon, our Persona, to demonstrate how her initial event finding journey would be dramatically improved once our solution was in place. We imagined an app, with features like a curated events list, a one-click registration button, and a searchable event participants list, which we quickly prototyped out of paper and presented to students. Many were confused by certain buttons and layout options, and we used this feedback to improve the design. We then created a higher quality digital prototype, and upon presenting it to students we quickly realized areas for improvement, such as the need to make it easier for a student to determine whether they successfully registered for an event. Many students loved the idea of our app and found it easy to use, but wanted more event location details presented, the ability to add a plus one, and various other features.
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Tools Used:
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Google Sheets (to create our To-Be Scenario)
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Balsamiq (to create our medium fidelity prototype)
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Google Slides (to create Sequential Storyboards)
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My Role: Creating several key screens for our mid-fidelity prototype using Balsamiq, finalizing the layout for our mid-fidelity prototype storyboard, and synthesizing and summarizing large portions of our design report. (Other tasks were divided equally.)
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Skills Developed: The ability to develop and design a solution idea into a practical deliverable and taking users' needs and feedback into account throughout the entire process.
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Design Artifacts:
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To-Be Scenario
Feature Hypotheses
Low Fidelity Prototype
Lo-Fi Prototype Sequential Storyboard
Click on the images for a larger view.
One-Time Sign In Process
Registering For An Event
Medium Fidelity Prototype
Evolution Phase
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As a group, we reflected upon the entire design journey and documented our learnings (see below). We also prepared a product pitch for our app and developed a plan for further improving our prototype. It was clear to us that the next major step was to focus on event promoters, so that our app could become a popular tool to promote events, which is ultimately necessary if we want to present events to event seekers.
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Tools Used:
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Google Docs (to collaborate online as a team)
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My Role: Synthesizing and summarizing our groups' learnings for our design report.
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Skills Developed: The ability to critically assess a design process.
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Lessons Learned:
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Avoid self-referential information when designing solutions for others.
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Remain focused on the target user for a solution by staying aware of their needs, goals, and pain points.
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Consider user feedback and involve users in the design process. This is critical for good design, since what seems logical to us as the solution creators might be confusing and frustrating to actual target users.
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