Google Design Exercise
An experience for new students to browse, search, and propose new student organizations
ROLE
User Research
Interaction design
User interface design
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TIMELINE
2019.01.28 - 2019.02.04
TOOLS
Sketch
Photoshop
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SKILLS
User research,
Competitive analysis,
Storyboard,
Usability test,
Prototyping
TASK
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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.
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Breaking down the task
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Who: New Students
What: Experience about student organization
Why: Orientation of a new school year
Content: Browse, search, and propose new student organizations.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Here are some of the common problems.
Design
Low-fi Prototype
Usability Test
Iteration
High-fi Prototype
Iteration
Based on the findings of the usability tests, I modified and iterated the wireframe.
Design
Low-fi Prototype
Usability Test
Iteration
High-fi Prototype
High-fi Prototype
To keep consistency with other products of NYU, I used the same color and typography for the website.
