Project Overview

What does a student need most? I participated in 2022 McMaster UI/UX Designathon to design an essential app for post-secondary students to enhance their day-to-day life. The solution is required to focus on organization and planning.

Responsibilities - UX design and presentation

I teamed up with two freelancers to design a hi-fidelity prototype to demonstrate our idea. I contributed to wireframing and prototyping. I also represented the team to present our solution.

The Challenge

Apr 2014 - Mar 2015

Target audience

Post-secondary students from all programs, schools, and backgrounds.
Can be international and resident students who study abroad, or in a city different from where they grew up or received high school education.

User problems

Given the different background, identities, cultures, personalities, experiences, and interests of first-year university students, I need to narrow down the focus to one generic struggle that matters most to freshmen. I focused on the difficulty of transitioning into a new environment while balancing between academic, social, and private lives.

3 questions to explore:

How can we help students feel control over their new university experiences?
How can we help students feel good about their academic performance and other aspects of university life?
How can the the app's features align with the goals of different students?

A note about the different backgrounds of university students in terms of their majors, familiar environment, and personalities

Research Methods

Apr 2014 - Mar 2015

Conversations with first year students

I want to understand how students feel about their first-year experience, the challenges that frustrated them most, and why they prioritize a certain aspect of life.

What kinds of challenges, concerns, and feelings do they have toward their first year experience?
How do they manage their academic life and extracurricular life? What aspect do they view as most important?
What kinds of support do they wish they have?

Surveys

I want to learn about the schedule and work distribution of students from different majors.

I reached out to students through Discord, Reddit, Quora, and other virtual meetup platforms. Here is the link to the survey I created for target audience:University Student Experience Survey

User persona of a student at Ohio State University

Insights

To optimize time management, students should adopt a goal-oriented approach, concentrate on a few tasks each day, and tackle them one at a time. An effective app should allow students to quickly jot down their to-do lists and move on to get the work done. No lengthy to-do list. No repeating cross-out of unfinished tasks.