Pursuit

I conducted five user interviews and created empathy maps to understand the users and their needs. Two user groups identified through research were parents of school-aged (minor) students and former students.

Research revealed that the parents wanted their children to have safe environments to develop their identities, their social and professional skills, and their ability to manage difficult situations. They are concerned about the risk of interacting on social media and are fearful of some users' motivations and deceptions. They limit their kids' use of social media to varying degrees.

Research also showed that former students valued their achievements due to their work ethic to succeed and to utilize help (such as assistive technology, math lab, charity) despite various barriers. They would have appreciated an app that helped them keep up with class assignments and discussions and that focused on collaboration, events, and networking in the community. They are grateful for the groups that gave them a sense of belonging when previously feeling like an outsider and/or having experienced trauma at home. Usually, "signing up" for a group involved a prior in-person, unexpected interaction that fostered the participants' motivation.

Research

Research summary
Research interview questions
Pain points
Personas
User journeys
Competitive audit

Research interview questions and participant quotes

1. Can you describe your current schedule and how you balance your responsibilities with personal recreation or social activities?
‍
2. Why do you like or don't like to use social media?
- When you use social media, what is your motivation for doing so?
- How often do you use social media?
- Which apps do you use?
‍
3. Why do your children like or don't like to use social media?
- When they use social media, what is their motivation for doing so?
- How often do they use social media?
- Which apps do they use?
‍
4. If you enrolled as a student in a post-secondary program today, why or why wouldn't you want to connect with other students in your program?
‍
5. If you were a student today, what would you value in a school community?
- What aspects of student/campus life would you want available to you?
‍
6. What do you value in a school community for your children?
- What aspects of student/campus life do you want available to them?
‍
7. Walk me through a time when you joined a student group (club, team, organization, online community), starting from when you made the decision to join.
- How did the experience with the group affect you after your involvement ended?
‍
8. What challenges do or did you face when socializing with student peers (on or off campus)?
‍
9. What challenges do or did your children face when socializing with student peers (on or off campus)?
‍
10. Is there any way in which you feel these challenges could be or could have been resolved?

"Kids face a lot of scrutiny but may in different ways than we did. We only had it from our immediate peers, but they face it there and on the Internet, and your parents hold you to a standard. They have a lot of pressure to conform. Everybody's trying to tell you who you need to be and how you need to be, and you don't even have the opportunity to try to figure that out for yourself."

- Participant

"What is it that you want to get out of relationships and how do you define success in those relationships? Being able to self-identify would be really good...identifying themselves and their tendencies."

- Participant

"I want them to learn what it means to have a sense of community - not necessarily with each other but also with the people that they live near and the people that they don't think about, like the homeless...to have a more worldly experience, an age-appropriate world experience."

- Participant

"When I moved to my new school and town, I felt that there was a lot more focus on how you were different and trying to remain separate than there was on saying how you were different and it didn't matter..."

- Participant

"Being helped if they need the help and being helpful if they can...just that integrity...if they could offer direct...more interactive groups...almost like community service with things of your interests and make them readily available."

- Participant

"My entire life, I always have questioned whether my opinions of something are worthy of comparing to others...some sort of internal worry that my opinion is not as important as other people's in the group..."

- Participant

"I wasn't the kid who came to school with new clothes...I tried to keep my school interactions as little as possible...I tried to appear pretty formidable but it was my own self-protection thing...I didn't do anything extracurricular because I started working as soon as I could because I wanted the [f***] out."

- Participant

Collaboration

Users want to participate in discussions related to their pursuits on campus and in the community.

Help

Users want assistance that fit their needs (academic, ability, or behavioral).

Security

Users want to have a sense of belonging and a safe environment to develop their identities and social network.

Competitive audit

I reviewed six competitors' mobile apps for guidance and to identify opportunities through the project duration.

Click below to view my audit spreadsheet notes and my audit report.

Audit spreadsheet Audit report

Image of homepage for Discord desktop app

Image of homepage for Microsoft Teams desktop app

Image of homepage for Edmodo desktop app

Starting the design

Paper wireframes
Digital wireframes
Low-fidelity prototype
Usability study

The original project prompt from this course was to design a sign-up feature, so I started sketching the opening screen to create an account. After, I continued sketching for a homepage, an inbox page, and a calendar page.

Image of final paper wireframe for homepage

Image of final paper wireframe for inbox page

Image of final paper wireframe for calendar page

Sign-up

"If the user is someone who wasn't used to computers or creating usernames and passwords, and also the language of the user would influence how it was set up, you may be able to run the cursor over the word in English and have it pop up in other languages..."

- User

I wanted all the text to be centered, surrounded by a featured video or image with interaction(s).

Homepage

"It seems like there's a lot of empty space here. It feels like a lot of space. Maybe there should be something; maybe this could be utilized more in some way..."

- User

I also wanted the homepage to have limited text with most of its space used for imagery or icons. I also imagined a sidebar menu that resembled an abstract form of file folders/tabs.

Image of digital wireframes for homepage

Inbox

On the inbox page, I wanted users to have viewing options, but with a large default space to use for an interactive conversation field that could have embedded multimedia and scrolling instant messaging and reactions.

Image of digital wireframes for mobile pages

Calendar

"It'd be interesting if it showed you any kind of conflicting object or conflicting calendar items that you have. Like, it could give you a warning if it was something that interfered with a plan that you had already made...and it'd all come straight to my phone."

- User

I wanted the calendar page to be fairly traditional in form with all days visible (unless customized by the user) but with a featured panel resembling an abstract form of a bulletin board with suggested events.

A few of the mobile wireframes for the home and calendar pages are shown as well.

Low-fidelity prototype

The low-fidelity prototype aimed to connect the primary user flow of creating an account with Pursuit, navigating from the homepage to the inbox, and responding to an unread message.

Affinity map

Affinity map from first usability study

Usability study insights

Users have trouble identifying where to return to the homepage. On the calendar page, users have difficulty adding an event to the calendar suggested by "Friends." Users have some difficulty locating specific elements due to legibility.

Refining the design

Mockups
High-fidelity prototype
Usability study

Using the feedback from the usability study, I plan to add a logo to clarify the functions in the top corners of each page and will consider including an additional connection to the homepage. I will add more connections between the event card and the calendar to offer additional intuitive paths for users to add an event. I plan to also enlarge various icons for legibility and remove the overlap of the messages from the images of each user in a conversation (or effectively distinguish the text from the image).

I also started to work on the mockups for the mobile app design.

Sign-up

Homepage

Inbox

Mobile

High-fidelity prototype

The high-fidelity prototype for the desktop app aimed to connect the primary user flow of creating an account with Pursuit, navigating through the homepage tutorial and from the homepage to the inbox, and responding to an unread message.

High-fidelity prototype (coming soon)

Image of high-fidelity prototype of the desktop app

Affinity map

Affinity map from second usability study

Users are unclear about the primary purpose of the app in its current state.

I need to review the user research when preparing to edit the high-fidelity prototype and conduct another competitive audit with direct competitors. I then need to adjust the mockups, considering users' suggested features and accessibility needs and plan a follow-up usability study to review the updated high-fidelity prototype.

Going forward

Next steps
User quotes
Takeaways

"I need to know if I'm typing my password or still entering my email, so I hope there can be a difference in color or a check mark when you're finished...just to let people know their progress or to indicate you need to type your email or finish this or move on."

- User

"Would there be somebody that would not want to share their date of birth? Would there be any students that would feel awkward putting their year as a nontraditional student? Is there a reason why you need the year to create this account? Would a student ID be okay? Sometimes we just use our email on an app."

- User

"When I went to the homepage the first time, it didn't have something to introduce what this website is about. The information could be somewhere together with 'Welcome to Pursuit' or at the top-right because there's some space there, and it would not be covering the picture of the person."

- User

"Either a homepage link or just a link indicating where you are on this site right now."

- User

"This looks like Messenger kind of, so if I am jumping from there to here...maybe I think this is something for fun, similar to Facebook."

- User

"Maybe have a small number indicating if there are new messages like if there's a number indicating whether you need to respond on the homepage or maybe a small round number next to 'Inbox'."

- User

"I would appreciate a calendar like this; normally I just figure out what day it is today."

- User

"What's going to stop people from recommending things that aren't even related to class? As an instructor I think it would be distracting, and it would lose the focus of this particular app. I would want to keep social and professional networking separate."

- User

"Are there going to be documents in here for students to look for things? Like of resources? 'Oh, if you need a mentor', 'oh, if you need to write a resume'...As a student and as an instructor, I would like that."

- User

Takeaways

Thank you for reviewing my work on this mobile app design!
‍
Participants in the user research represented parents of school-aged (minor) students and former students, and participants in the usability studies represented collegiate faculty and former and current students.

All groups expressed an interest in a student networking app that focused on students' professional and academic growth. When incorporating features that encourage collaborating and developing a sense of belong, those features should not distract from the intent to prepare students for a career or college path after graduation.

So far all participants see purpose with a future version of the app. They are unclear about the app's purpose based on their experience with the current prototype. The current UI contributes to the vagueness of the app's intent.

Moving forward, I need to better prioritize developing the features that illustrate the app's purposefulness for a usability study, making sure that the features included in the prototype are in line with the users' pain points. I also need to strengthen my information architecture so that I can be better organized and able to identify relevant areas of focus during the testing phase.