UX Case Study: Improving the Social Experience of General Assembly Students
UXDI Project 1 on Design Thinking
My first project (P1) as a User Experience Design Immersive (UXDI) student with General Assembly was on design thinking — the iterative process of uncovering a problem through research and solving through design. The project brief indicated my client General Assembly (GA), a tech-education business with a growth mindset and open to improvements, has hired me as a UX designer to improve their current students’ academic or social experience. I chose to focus my P1 on improving students’ social experiences.
Deliverable
5 minute presentation on the research and design process including a prototype run through
Project Duration
8 days
Team
Me
Project Overview
In order to uncover and understand an opportunity area for improvement, I had to first conduct research for key insights that would determine a problem. These found insights and problem would guide the ideation process so that I could make the right informed decisions needed to design an effective solution. This proposed solution would then need to be refined through usability testing to ensure the solution addresses the problem in a functional and navigational manner.
Finding the problem
User Research
To kickoff this process, I started with user research to learn more on students’ social experiences at GA’s New York City campus and obtain their thoughts on GA-organized events. I hypothesized that GA students are often busy meeting deadlines and working on demanding projects, but would still like the opportunity to participate in GA-sponsored social activities.
I set out to test my hypothesis by conducting one-on-one in-person interviews with three students on campus. The students randomly sampled were two User Experience Design Immersive (UXDI) students and one Web Development Immersive student (WDI). The core of the interviews asked questions on:
- What are the types of resources used to seek social events?
- What are their favorite social activities in and out of GA with other students?
- What are their thoughts on GA-sponsored social events, organization, & notification?
These interviews revealed qualitative data on students’ paint points, behaviors, and desires regarding their social experience while at GA.
Research Synthesis
To synthesize the qualitative data gathered I took to affinity mapping and compiled key insights in categories and summed up each themed category with a personalized statement that encompasses the insights of each interview within a category.
Trend patterns revealed the following main insights:
- Students participate in different social activities mainly with classmates: going to bars, karaoke, lunch breaks at the park, and weekend hangouts
- There are few GA-organized social events offered during cohort duration
- Students would like more collaborative opportunities between different program students either social or professional.
“I wish we had more social things. It would be nice to meet people from other classes…It would be nice on some of the projects to have a second opinion on the design. My peers are not quite design people just like me so it would help to collaborate on more projects.”
- Lisa, WDI student
- Communication of events through Slack channel can be ineffective when students are receiving many other Slack notifications on other matters like class assignments
- Event information is not distributed in time with day-of or last-minute invites.
“It was good…. Had we known it was going to happen we would’ve been more inclined to stay longer and talk to other cohorts and other programs cause I don’t think that happens enough.”
- Dane, UXDI student
Given these trends, I saw the main pain points to be: students are aware of how collaborative the industry is, but are not meeting students from other programs enough to prepare for the career collaboration expected, and the lack of social events hosted by GA does not help with this.
A Problem was Found
The user research and synthesis revealed the following problem:
General Assembly (GA) students would like attend to more frequent and well-communicated GA-sponsored social events to meet and connect with students from other programs.
Immersive students are not meeting each other enough to form connections and learn how to collaborate together. How might we create an organized way for GA to offer accessible social events so students feel better connected?
Creating a Solution
Ideation
During the research, I asked what were the main methods student sought and searched for events to attend. They reported different platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Meetup, and LinkedIn. Seeing that all these platforms have their own mobile method, I determined my design would be for a mobile app. I started off the ideation process with sketching some wireframes and user flows with just paper and a pencil.
Then I transferred my sketches into mid-fi wireframes in preparation for prototyping. I wanted to make sure I included features to search for and attend events, connect with students going, and invite other students to join.
These features would address:
- Easing access to view and attend GA events
- Ability to connect with students going to an event including those from different programs by viewing attending and messaging to link up
- Extending invites to other students which can serve as an alternative method to Slack notification for more centralized event information
Prototyping & Usability Testing
After my wireframes were designed I moved on to prototyping. I connected each designated hotspot to where it linked to and once it was ready I embarked on usability testing. Two rounds were conducted with four participants each for which I created three scenarios with accompanying tasks to see how well tester where able to navigate my app
- You are a UXDI student who would like to seek more social activities to meet other GA students. You have some free time coming up now that your first project is over. Log in to the app and attend an event happening next week.
- As a UXDI student, you’re aware of how collaborative the industry is. You’d like to connect with more Web Development students. Send a message to a WDI student attending the same event you signed up for.
- You think the event you signed up for is going to be really interesting and would like to invite your classmates. Send an invite to three other students.
Participants reported the simplicity of its design was helpful to navigate and the easiness to complete the tasks made it attractive for its use. They felt they could see themselves using an app like this. However, another participant mentioned she would have liked to see some form of tracking feature for events she signed up. The sizing of the check boxes were also an issue when selecting students to invite to one vent as well as a participant expected to be able to click the title sections on the homepage for upcoming events.
“Those boxes are tiny. Good thing I have tiny fingers, but not everyone does.”
- Francesca, UXDI student
For the prototype I presented, I made changes to the feature of selecting students to invite by making the name fields clickable as well as the checkboxes. I also extended the hotspot to cover the title section on the homepage so it can be clicked on as well. There are next steps needed to ensure the app functions even better. I would like to resize the checkboxes larger and not just make the name fields clickable. Incorporating an event calendar as a form of tracking system of attending event is an added feature I would included as well. These feature integrations are based on the user testing results and provide a better understanding of the iterative process of executing a design product.
Learned Lessons
Seeing my initial wireframes go from pencil sketches on a plain notebook to a compiled and functioning prototype users navigate through was a humbling, but impactful experience as a first-time designer. This project immersed me in the iterative process of UX design with its use of applied user research to make the informed decisions to design an effective solution to the problem.
