Google design exercise

Google Design Exercise

An experience for new students to browse, search, and propose new student organizations

ROLE

User Research

Interaction design

User interface design

TIMELINE

2019.01.28 - 2019.02.04

TOOLS

Sketch

Photoshop

SKILLS

User research,

Competitive analysis,

Storyboard,

Usability test,

Prototyping

TASK

Design an experience for new students to browse, search, and propose new student organizations. Provide your overall process, a wireframe flow, and one to two screens at higher fidelity.

Breaking down the task

Who: New Students

What: Experience about student organization

Why: Orientation of a new school year

Content: Browse, search, and propose new student organizations.

PROCESS OVERVIEW

01 Research

Research

Survey

Interview

Competitive Analysis

Survey

To understand my target users' habit about student organizations, I went to the Club Festival of NYU and conducted surveys there. I got 24 responses in total. Amount them, 9 are from new students who have just started their study at NYU, 15 are from returning students.

Key findings

- Users prefer to learn about information about student organizations through websites, and that's also the most popular and accessible way currently.

- Regarding getting to know an organization, people expect to learn about the basic info, description, expense through web/app, learn about reputation through friends, and learn about event details and schedule by talking to people from the organization

- It's hard to decide which organizations to join without attending one or some events they hold.

Research

Survey

Interview

Competitive Analysis

Interview

To understand the target user which is the new student specifically, I did a quick interview with 3 of my survey participants who have just started their journey in NYU this spring semester.

Research

Survey

Interview

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis

Most of the digital platforms for the student organizations are provided by the school website or mobile application. And it's usually a small section and requires school account to login. So I analyzed the platform of my university, the NYU Engage.

NYU Engage is the webpage for student organizations and their activities. It is the only place where this overall information is available for students in NYU. However, not a lot students find this platform effective.

Browsing and searching experience

What I've noticed

Advantages:

1. A clear classification of the organizations by affiliation and category.

2. UI is laconic.

Challenges:

1. All the organizations are displayed in an extremely long list, making it difficult to just randomly browsing.

2. The expression for the affiliation(which department/school...) of the organizations "All Umbrellas" is confusing.

Exploring details

What I've noticed

Advantages:

1. The information of the organization is throughout and clear.

2. It's convenient to RSVP for the upcoming events by a simple click.

Challenges:

1. Events are displayed both on the category "Feed" and under the information.

2. The expression for events list "Feed" is confusing.

3. It's difficult to identify which event is a past event and which is a future event.

4. There's no instruction or entry for joining the club.

02 Defining Problem

Defining Problem

Persona

Storyboard

Challenge for offline organization events

Persona

The target user of the experience is the new students. I made two personas, one typical for a student who is open to browsing and joining diverse organizations, another one for a student who has a specific interest and might want to propose a new related organization.

Defining Problem

Persona

Storyboard

Challenge for offline organization events

Storyboard

Based on the experience of typical off-line events, I created the storyboard of a woman who wants to search and learn about student organizations in the Club Festival.

Defining Problem

Persona

Storyboard

Challenge for offline club events

Challenges for offline club events

Student organizations in universities usually have a big orientation event at the beginning of each semester/academic year. Taking NYU for example, the Club Fest is held at the beginning of each fall & spring semester. It is a grand meeting with more than 300 clubs and organizations, and thousands of student would come to visit each time.

Defining Problem

Persona

Storyboard

Challenge for offline club events

- Journey Map

- Pains

Journey map

Here's a typical journey map of a student browsing, searching, and joining a student organization on an offline event like the Club Fest.

Defining Problem

Persona

Storyboard

Challenge for offline club events

- Journey Map

- Pains

Pains

Though off-line events have the advantage of being able to talk to the board member directly and asking about the events directly, they have limitation such as efficiency and overall experience. Here are some pains:

03 Ideation

Ideation

Concept

Information Architecture

Concept

Based on all the research and analysis above, here are the goals of designing the experience:

· A platform that serves as the information portal for student organizations.

· An easy way to learn about student organizations effectively with the most important information.

· A helping hand for those who enjoy browsing or not clear about which organizations they are interested in.

· An effortless way of registering a new organization with a simple form.

Ideation

Concept

Information Architecture

Information architecture

Besides the traditional listing of the organizations, I design a page for browsing events and their organizations since events are the core characteristics for student organizations and new students may not sure about joining the club before attending the first event.

04 Design

Design

Low-fi Prototype

Usability Test

Iteration

High-fi Prototype

Low-fi Prototype

Based on the user research result that users will decide whether joining an organization after learning about their events, so besides browsing organizations information, the listing and calendar of events is also important. For the navigation system, I adopted a similar system of NYU websites for continuity.

Browsing and searching

Proposing a new organization

Checking event lists and organizations

Checking my events

Design

Low-fi Prototype

Usability Test

Iteration

High-fi Prototype

Usability Test

I did the usability test with 3 users. I asked them to try out browsing and searching student organizations freely. And what they would do if they want to propose a new organization.