Campus Transportation

Introduction:

Last week, we pursued the topic of transportation on­ campus and the waste of space of paved paths throughout campus. We all went out to take on user interviews and reconvened on Wednesday to present our findings with the rest of the class. Through the valuable feedback of our peers, we discovered that overall we were focusing on the efficiency of transportation and space on­campus and discovered that another crucial attribute to traveling is enjoyment. And so we reevaluated our focus and now wonder “How can we make traveling around on campus a pleasant experience for all mediums, walking, skating and more included?” Thus, we decided to delve into a different realm of user experience, to explore what users find enjoyable and fun in traveling.

What We Thought:

“Our feedback from last week’s critique session and some of our preliminary user interviews led us in a new direction, focusing on making UCSD a more pleasurable space to travel within, for all parties involved. We worked on building a survey that would adequately serve as quality assurance for what we will find in our interviews to come. We’re looking forward to understanding more about our peers, and seeing where this ‘pleasure space’ will come from!”

Cheers,

Ocelot

A sneak peak of our survey, for gathering general demographics of our user community, find possible participants to interview and gather some basic data quickly.

“This week felt like a huge step forward even though is probably wasn’t as tremendous as it felt. After our discussions with our peers, it feels like we have a firm direction, somewhere to go. This problem space also gives us a little more creative license than simply focusing on efficiency, and hopefully, can prove a little more fun. Sometimes finding the right solution is as much a matter of research as it is asking the right question.”

Best,

Turtle

“We’ve finally narrowed down our problem space: the experience of walking through campus. The first thing that comes to mind is the Fun Theory Project. How could we get more people to use the stairs (vs. the escalator)? See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyzwa0TyuIE. If we could think of something like this to implement onto our campus.. that’d be amazing. I’m not the biggest fan of UCSD’s layout and architecture, so the idea that we could make it better is absolutely exciting.”

Regards,

Lion

“Can we get more people to choose the stairs by making it more fun?…. 66% more people than normal chose the stairs over the escalator.”

“After performing user interviews the past week, I realized how much more ideas you can get from user data than sticking to the ideas brainstormed in your own group. By hearing the stories and observing the lives of actual users, there was a lot of new things we discovered about transportation on campus, including the idea that traveling through campus isn’t just about traveling from one spot of campus to another in the quickest, most efficient way, but also enjoying the experience and making your time worth it. There was a variety of ways users did this, from listening and dancing to music as they walk or taking the less populated route to enjoy the quiet surrounding nature. Although I am relatively new to user experience research, I see how much more important user interviews are for exploring your options andbroadening your scope.”

Take it easy,

Whale