Research

Exploring User Insights

To begin the user research phase of this project, we opted to distribute questionnaires to a large number of students. This allowed us to focus on understanding their pain points, preferences, and expectations regarding the university application process. By gathering these responses, we were able to collect quantitative and qualitative data that provide valuable insights that shape the development of the app.

Research Methodology

We opted to conduct online surveys using Google Forms, so we could reach a large group of students. We aimed to recruit college students who recently went through the application process to understand their thoughts when they applied to university. Participants were provided a link to the survey, which they can access and complete at their convenience. When designing the questions, we made sure they were clear, unbiased, and covered the research objective, which was to understand the students needs and gather user preferences.

Insights and Findings

User needs and challenges

• 72% of respondents indicate that managing multiple university applications simultaneously is a challenge, especially when keeping track of deadlines and required documents.
• 82% of respondents express frustration with the time-consuming nature of the process, stating that it hinders their ability to focus on other academic and personal commitments.
  

Pain Points and Difficulties

• 73% of participants express difficulties in keeping track of the status of their applications, leading to anxiety and uncertainty about their progress.
• 48% of participants report frustration with the lack of a centralized system or tool to monitor and organize their submitted applications, resulting in potential missed opportunities or incomplete submissions.
  

Measuring User Satisfaction

Respondents express higher satisfaction levels when receiving timely notifications and updates on their application status, highlighting the importance of transparent communication.

Impact on Design

Insights from the pain points and difficulties section of the questionnaire significantly impacted the design for the application. The design can address time management challenges by providing deadline reminders and time-saving shortcuts. A centralized dashboard can track application progress and send notifications. These insights inform a user-centric design that simplifies the application process and increases the chances of successful applications to multiple universities.

The Foundations of Campus Guide

Building Empathy

Based on my findings, we were able to create a student persona, Emily, and map out her university application journey. This student journey map helped us understand what students go through when applying to multiple universities.

The results from the student journey map, research, and surveys, were used to make informed decisions, prioritize features, and ensure that the design of Campus Guide aligns with student expectations. The biggest pain points we discovered was that students had difficulty in managing multiple applications simultaneously as well as, most students felt uncertainty after submitting applications.

Navigating the Application Journey

From here, we used the insights gained from our research to develop a site map which depicts the key functionalities that the high fidelity screens would focus on. This site map also aided in our collaboration as everyone had a shared understanding of the application's structure and functionalities. This framework, along with our research insights would guide our designs moving forward.

Early Wireframes

Since this was a timely design challenge, we jumped straight into greyscale medium fidelity wireframes. The team would meet up every night and share design possibilities and work towards making our designs more cohesive.

Style Guide

To establish design consistency and bring the app to life, the team developed a style guide to act as reference and enable more efficient collaboration. We decided to go with blue and yellow as they convey feelings of trust and professionalism.

Bringing Campus Guide to Life

While there is much to be explored with Mrs. College Guide , we developed this high-fidelity prototype that resembles the final product.

Retrospective

Working on Mrs. College Guide was an exciting journey as it was my first design challenge where I had to work with a team. There is still much more to be explored with this app, but let's reflect on the successes, challenges and key takeaways from this project.

What went well

I was thankful to work with a collaborative and helpful team for this project. Each team member came from different experience levels, but we all treated each other as equals and developed a supportive team culture. This allowed me to learn a lot from my team as we encouraged and valued each others feedback for the designs.

Challenges

As this project was part of a design challenge, I believe the biggest challenge was lack of time. We only had a week to work on the designs for this project, so it was difficult for us iterate our final designs based on more user tests.

Key Takeaways

My key takeaway from this project was that strong communication and collaboration is key when working with a team to deliver quality designs. Our collaborative team and dedication to a user-centric design will carry on with us in future endeavors. We successfully passed this round of the design challenge and I was grateful for such a valuable experience.