What is it?
A desktop solution designed as a deliverable for a first year course, our team created a solution to enable student connection at the University of Toronto. A system designed to integrate with existing university architecture, students can customize a profile that will assist in connecting them with the best of over 900 clubs. Allowing users to curate their profiles, get matched to clubs, and streamlining the application process will enable students to find the best clubs for them. With a little bit of tweaking, some more usability testing and iterative design, and a lot of application development, Club Hub would address student needs in a way that they are not currently being met.
The Problem Space
The Process
Prompted to investigate different domains of the student life experience, our team decided to explore connection and community making at the University of Toronto. How were students connecting with other students? What challenges were they facing? What barriers did they encounter? How could we represent their struggle?
To investigate community making and building we chose to focus on how students find, join, and participate in student groups and organizations. Using these groups and organizations as a proxy for meeting like-minded individuals, we had to investigate what the current landscape looked like and in what ways students currently attempted to traverse it.
The Research
We reached out to actual University of Toronto students to see what they had to say. We developed and deployed a survey (reaching 48 respondents) as well as conducted 8 user interviews. We discovered that some of the greatest barriers relating to finding information about club scheduling, club activity, and whether or not it suited the students' interests. Additionally, through the user interviews, we discovered that students had difficulty finding these clubs and mentioned that club fairs occurred infrequently and online resources were misleading. With this information in mind, we set out to address this problem.
Development
User Research Analysis
Getting to Know Our Users
Following the tenets of design thinking (and following an iterative design cycle) our team developed numerous schematics based on the research to inform our low-fidelity prototype. Sketching out personas, scenarios, and maps, we had a clearer idea for how to approach application design.
From our As-Is Scenario we could envision one that was to be. With out persona we could explore what a student would feel throughout the club discovery process and application.
Prototyping
Prototyping for Success
Our findings and schematics helped us draw a Low Fidelity Prototype to figure out how we could make students' dreams a reality. Taking insights from our research analysis we tried to address pain points that prevented students from joining clubs successfully.
This resulted in us constructing a Club Hub dashboard. A network and repository of all available University of Toronto clubs with a built in calendar that uses course information to build your availability. From there, a student can get matched with Clubs, apply to them, and then track club notifications.
After testing, we used results to develop the Medium Fidelity Prototype in Figma. We discovered the kinds of information that students wanted on their dashboard and the functionality and so this was added to the prototype.
Solution
Not Perfect but Getting There
As the team finished up the term, Club Hub now had a polished High Fidelity design using Adobe XD that could be used for further usability testing and re-design. Every feature in this prototype was informed by users, and was made to best represent their needs and requirements. The design addressed student needs of finding information about Clubs as all information would be updated and maintained in one central repository. As well, Club Hub would be able to ease the pain of scheduling as a calendar features prominently in the design.
Though it's not (yet?) a real application, the change that it would bring to the club selection and application process is multifold. Allowing users to curate their profile, get matched to clubs, and streamlining the application process would enable students to find the best clubs for them. With a little bit of tweaking, some more usability testing and iterative design, and a lot of application development, Club Hub could address student needs in a way that they are not currently being met.
Lessons Learned
As this was a class project, there were obviously many lessons to be learned.
Here are the ones that felt most notable
1. When in doubt, test it out.
If we had difficult decisions to make regarding some kind of design choice, we were best of testing it out with users.
2. Discussion is the best medicine.
We spent countless hours discussing and reworking presentations and prototypes, refining our work and solutions and this always resulted in stronger work.
3. We're all in this together.
Counting on each other and delegating effectively we worked strongly as a team with minimal friction. Though we had a huge workload, it hardly felt like it because we worked together to play to everyone's strengths.
