Laurier Connect Application
An application designed for Laurier students to make new connections.
Project Overview
During the winter term of 2021, The Deans of Student Offices at Waterloo and Brantford campuses started a multi-campus review of Laurier students' wellness.
This comprehensive review was conducted with the assistance of the Unless Design Partners whom our UX Design Thinking II class were able to work with throughout the semester. Therefore, we had the opportunity to work with clients in order to present different solutions concerning student wellness at Laurier University.
Roles
User Research, User Testing, Prototyping
Duration
4 months
Tools
Figma, Canva, Google Surveys
Team
Ameet Armacy, Nicholas Mueller, Erica Wang, Hannah Lee, Het Patel
The Design Challenge
“Neglecting to tackle wellness in integrated ways hurts students.”
This quote taken straight out of the Report on Engagement which highlights that nothing being done to help students can hurt their well being and mental health.
Furthermore, our group decided to brainstorm integrated ways to help students that face challenges engaging with other students.
User Need Statements
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Throughout the interviews conducted with Laurier students, we found that users struggle to join clubs which leads to them lacking motivation to successfully partake in these Laurier clubs that are provided for them.
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Connecting with others is an important aspect of improving student wellness at Laurier. In addition, we acknowledge that students don’t always know each other from the beginning and many need assistance on where to start looking for those with similar interests.
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Our users need to be seen and understood during hard times throughout the school year. Often times students wish to connect with their classmates or Laurier acquaintances who are going through the same stress levels as they are.
Design Goals
After conducting our user research, it gave our team a better understanding of what our users want and desire for our application. In order for our application to solve the problem at hand, our solution must help users:
Search for students within the campus that share similar interests
Creating safe and comfortable student community where students can be heard
Interact with users through the app during midterm and exam season to distress
Envisioning Users Needs
Users Personas
In order to visualize who our main users will be after conducting the user need statements, our group developed data-driven personas that will help us understand and guide us through our solutionary process of improving the wellness of students at Laurier.
Journey Maps
Furthermore, we generated journey maps based on each of our represented personas shown above to showcase our users process and what they go through to achieve their desired goal.
Collecting Research
Our team and I conducted usability interviews to fully understand their pain points and needs when it comes to wellness. We interviewed over 5 participants for proper insights.
Interview Results
Easy ways to find students within the campus that share similar interests
Creating safe and comfortable student communities where students can be heard
Make an app to use during times of distress (during midterm and exam season)
After conducting interviews, we were able to conduct 3 important insights for our application including:
Prototyping Progress
Low fidelity prototype
Low Fidelity wireframes were made with Figma
Medium Fidelity Prototype
Profile Page (left)
Medium Fidelity Prototypes were made on Figma
Home Page (right)
Testing Feedback: Cognitive Walkthroughs
For our cognitive walkthroughs, we had 8 students participate in completing our rigorously thought out tasks. As a result, our users had a task success rate of 100%. Here are some of our findings and changes that we made:
The introvert-extrovert slider was deemed unhelpful by the majority of our user testing participants, therefore the slider was completely removed to avoid cluster and confusion.
Users suggested that we include the ability to search for, add, and receive recommended passions. Therefore, we created an About me section where users can discuss their interests and who they are.
We introduced a back button for our main pages to improve the overall functionality, accessibility and navigation through the pages of the Laurier Connect application.
Laurier Connect App
High-Fidelity Prototype made with Figma
Landing Page
Step 1: Create Profile
Step 2: Program and Campus
Step 3: Upload a Profile Picture
Step 4: Gender
Step 5: Privacy Preferences
Step 6: Interests
Home Page
Join Group Page
Group Page
Message Board
Notifications Page
Rewards Page
Congratulations (Reward) Page
Profile Page
Edit Profile Page
Login Page
Conclusion
Using all the research collected from our interviews and cognitive walkthroughs, we were able to improve the wellness of students by giving them a platform to freely connect and engage with other students which gives them the university experience they deserve.
Students connecting and supporting each other will help the wellness of students according to our extensive research and weekly meetings with our clients that helped our process extensively.