This is a solution for a two-week design challenge of my design thinking class:

How to avoid information overload without missing the events you care about at Rice University? 

I went through the entire design thinking process: Empathize (conduct 10+ user interviews), Define (summarize user needs and define the design challenge), Ideate (come up with 20+ ideas and focus on the best ones), Prototype (first using Google slides, then Adobe XD) and Test.

Relevant Skills: User Interview, Brainstorming, Project Management, Prototype, Adobe XD

EMPATHIZE

We conducted 10+ user interviews with undergraduate and graduate students at Rice university, and identified 4 most common user needs for finding and scheduling events:

• Discovering events outside social circle
• Privacy – commitment vs social platform
• FOMO – fear of missing out but sometimes want to stay away from social media
• Spontaneity and flexibility when scheduling events

Eventually, we decided to focus on discovery and privacy, and thus developed our user persona:

DEFINE

Based on our user research, we redefined our design challenge as the following:

How might we personalize Rice students’ event discovery and sharing process?

IDEATE

After voting, we agreed on three important goals that we want to focus on for the first prototyping and testing:

• Separate sharing and saving in event discovery and management
• Create a hub for categorizing Rice events into identifiable communities with shared interests
• Validate whether the features of our product can meet the needs 
  

 

 

 

 

FIRST PROTOTYPE

We created the first prototype on Google Slides.

User feedbacks from first testing

We conducted 4 user interviews based on the first prototype, during which two main questions arise:

• How can the ‘Share’ feature be more convenient?

• • A “group” feature that allows the sharing of multiple events within persisting lists of friends
  • A communication/chat system that resembles GroupMe
• How does it actually allow more flexibility regarding sharing options?
  • A saving option page where users can choose to save an event to their private list or group list

SECOND PROTOTYPE

We created the second prototype on Adobe XD.

Specifically, we had three new features based on the previous testing:

• My Groups: users can view and share events in public and private groups they followed. This feature makes sharing more convenient.
• Group Chat: it enhances the sharing process because users can now share events with personal messages and plan events in more detail. Furthermore, it decreases the reliance on other platforms such as Group me or other social medias.
• Adjusted  Saving: users can now choose to save an event to a group or his own event list.

User feedbacks from second testing

What users like about this prototype:

• “I really like how this app combines calendar with group chats so I don’t need to switch between apps”
• Users believed the app would solve a lot of their problems with club finding and scheduling

Our team’s app is voted as the second favorite product among all teams because of its simplicity