Portfolio Overview
The chore of trying to locate a vacant spot in a busy location is a problem that plagues millions of people daily — especially students on college campuses looking for a place to eat or study. Having to physically travel to a location in order to verify its vacancy is arguably inadequate in today’s hi-tech world. In our “Introduction to User-Centered Design” class, we took it upon ourselves to find a design solution that would tackle this ubiquitous issue.
Our project became an app that had several features to assist users to find suitable locations on campus. The first main function was that the app would allow users to check if their self-determined favorite spots were currently available on campus, allowing users to check if these places were vacant without physically traveling to it. The second main feature was for users to be able to quickly and painlessly identify the nearest suitable location for their needs, whether it be a quiet place to study, or an open table for four people to eat. The final main feature was a friends list, allowing users to locate their friends on campus and message them if they want to be in contact. We also present statistical information of campus locations via a heat-map visualization, useful to users for planning their schedule and to campus staff for organizing resources more efficiently.
To develop this project, we entered a 10-step design process of creating artifacts progressing from general brainstorming to high fidelity mockups. Along the way, the general vision for the app became stronger and more refined, and the idealization of the app became closer and closer to reality.
The 10 artifacts are as follows:
- Research findings
- Polished personas
- Scenarios
- Design sketches that the team created together
- Storyboards that group members created individually
- Sitemap
- Paper prototype
- Quick evaluation findings
- Annotated wire-frames
- High-fidelity Mockup
This portfolio reflects the skills that were developed as a designer over the past 10 weeks and shows the amount of effort, revision, and changes as well as mistakes encountered throughout. This introduction won’t prove anything, which is what the rest of the portfolio is for.