Redesigning a Lobby for USC’s Film School; A UX Research Case Study
THE PROJECT
The University of Southern California is home to the #1 film school in the nation, according to the Hollywood Reporter: The School of Cinematic Arts (SCA). Featuring several buildings in Spanish-style architecture and a similar design to the Paramount Studio Lots, the SCA complex is arguably the most beautiful place on USC’s campus.
One building in the complex, known as SCI, hosts the Interactive Media & Games (IMGD) and Media Arts + Practice (MA+P) departments. The first thing you see when walking into SCI is a big, open lobby —
— a distinguished space with large touchscreens on the wall and boundless potential value for the community of students, faculty, and visitors who use it. But most days, it sits empty, reduced to a liminal space.
My team explored this problem — “How can we redesign the SCI lobby and its touchscreens to better meet the needs of students?” — through user experience research.
THE TEAM
My teammates Ashton Tu, Carey Crooks and I are all students in the Media Arts + Practice (MA+P) division at USC. We worked together to develop and conduct user interviews, create user personas, user journeys, a problem statement, and brainstorm potential solutions.
MY ROLE
In addition to the work we completed as a team, my role in this project was synthesizing and designing the visual documentation of our research process.
USER INTERVIEWS
The first step in our process was to conduct user interviews. We decided to focus on the user base of students whose departments are in SCI (MA+P and Interactive Media & Game Design (IMGD) majors, minors, and graduate students). We met with and interviewed 8 people, asking them about their experiences using (or not using) the lobby. Our research was both evaluative and generative, since we asked about what was/wasn’t working in the lobby and what users might like to see implemented to improve the space.
USER PERSONA, SCENARIO, & JOURNEY
Taking inspiration from these interviews, we created a user persona to represent a typical student that might use the SCI lobby, featuring her goals in relation to the lobby, and pain points that hindered her from achieving these goals.
We also wrote a user scenario to demonstrate Skylar’s relationship with the lobby —
— and a user journey to illustrate the way the lobby fits in with the rest of her day.
INTERVIEW SYNTHESIS
Next, we scoured the recordings of our user interviews to find common themes that emerged. I created a spreadsheet and divided themes into four groups: behaviors users exhibited, strengths of the lobby, weaknesses, and opportunities to improve the lobby. Each time a user mentioned something that fit into one of these categories, I made a note of it. Then, I created visualizations of this data and some user quotes:
There were many ideas that came up again and again in interviews. We used these to create a final problem statement that addressed the common experiences among users.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The SCI Lobby does not live up to its potential to add value to the community of students in MA+P and IMGD.
Most students only pass through the lobby on their way to class — they don’t view it as a useful space for much else.
How can we redesign the touchscreens and the space to make the SCI lobby conducive to studying, group meetings, and connecting communities across and within disciplines?
PROTOTYPES
My partners on this project then took the next steps to iterate potential solutions. Their main focus was to redesign the lobby’s touchscreens. Carey developed some wireframes and mid-fidelity prototypes.
Her prototypes included sections featuring student bios, student work, fun polls, and an events calendar, all designed to facilitate community connectivity.
Carey’s prototypes are simple enough they could be implemented relatively quickly, and could act as placeholders in the lobby while the next iterations are under development.
Ashton created a higher-fidelity prototype, meant to address more of the lobby’s weaknesses.
Her prototype included multiple features to assist students, share information, and represent the identity of the cinema school programs in SCI.
It also featured student profiles and projects.
NEXT STEPS
Our vision is for these prototypes to be playtested and iterated further to optimize their function. We’d also love to see some tables and couches for studying and group meetings. Overall, we hope this research can be useful in revealing current issues with the SCI lobby and in proposing future strategies to make the lobby a valuable space for students and the community!