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The theme of our problem space was "Health and Wellness in 2021". With the new normal of mostly online classes, the experience of new first-year university students was likely not shaping up to be what they had envisioned. Given the circumstances of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, we set out to create an experience for college freshmen to make new connections, whether social or academic.
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Product Design, Group Project
9 weeks (Winter 2020)
Miro, Figma, Pen and Paper
Research Methods (Interviews, Personas, Journey Mapping), Low and High-fidelity Prototyping
High-fidelity prototype in Figma
Each team member interviewed one to two first-year college students with a variety of living and learning situations. We asked about how they were meeting and connecting with other students online and their pain points pertaining to their pandemic-time learning situation.
By collectively pooling the insights and information from our interviews, we were able to see common pain points, communication channels, and coping strategies across our participants.
A snapshot of our chunking and thematic analysis process!
<aside> 💭 Students are seeking a mixture of academic and social connection
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<aside> 💭 The needs of each student are unique
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<aside> ❌ Meeting new people in online classes is more difficult than it was in person
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<aside> ❌ While community events are held online, students are usually deterred from not knowing how many people will attend
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By synthesizing our findings and pain points from our user research interviews, we created two personas. We had two general types of students from interviews: socially-focused and academically-focused, and we were thinking of first-year students looking to make both social and academic connections using our product. We also made sure to account for geographic differences in our personas, because many students are not attending classes in the same time zone as their university.
Jayden was the academically-focused persona.