RU READY
My role: UI,UR,
An college navigator and community builder for school clubs for Rutgers, this app also features a custom character creator to boost engagement. Students can create their own unique avatar to represent themselves within the app and their chosen club.
This not only adds a fun and personalized element to the app, but also helps students feel more connected to their virtual community. The character creator could offer a range of customization options, from hairstyles and clothing to accessories and facial features, ensuring that each student's avatar is as unique as they are.
Target user
The target user is the modern student 19-24 year olds, that wants to feel closer to their college community.
15 weeks long
Tool: Figma, Adobe
Platform: App
Context
My role
Craft the business plan, mange the full team and build intuitive interfaces, ensuring seamless user experiences. Personalized recipes, prioritize usability, and refine features through user feedback for continuous improvement.
Problem
Rutgers has issued this Request for Proposals to establish a partner to explore, define and build
an interactive product. As part of the selection process, RFP respondents are asked to develop
a pilot for a program focused specifically on how
to provide the student and faculty population on Rutgers New Brunswick campuses a means to support their own and each other’s identity,
sense of well-being, and day-to-day lives.
Solution
Offer a mobile app that connects students with each other through campus involvement. It allows users to see and register for upcoming events around them based on their interests and hobbies. Features: sync calendars, view friend activity, create groups. A key trait of the app would a assistant avatar to help users connect better better with app and to the University.
Survey
Muilti question survey delivered virtually to Rutgers Students, Understanding the background of our users, Understanding the way our users live and interact with the world, Understanding the essential parts of life where our users need assistance.
Design Process
Once the data returned, we organized it and began to form it into a user persona. This action takes us as a group for approximately one hour to complete. We found that our average user is a single, 27 year old female graduate student who lives with roommates and whose current position is a full-time project manager. We decided to name this person a jane.
We started to form Jane’s habits from the survey research that we gathered. Jane has a very inactive lifestyle, having little to no social time, and not going out very much. She spends much of her time working and doing homework. Jane works at least 40hrs a week, 10hrs of class time, and 12 hrs of homework spending a total of 62 hrs week on work alone.
Perspective user journey
Her morning routine was standardized. She wakes up, does her hygiene regimen, eats, and gets ready for work. The work day for her was mainly performing tasks and delegating work to her coworkers. After work, she heads to school to complete class and homework, while also making time for group meetings. Finally, her day ends when she still does a little bit more homework, but after that, she has the rest of the time for herself.
Sketch&
Prototype
Now that we have our targeted user crafted, we have separately begun to draw ideas for the potential product. Once completed, we came back together and looked to see what ideas delivered the most value. The following steps were taken to write down ideas for a product to help solve Jane’s problems while keeping in mind the guild lines that Rutgers University has given us. Once we came back as a group, we picked our best and most practical ideas for the prototyping phase
Prototype goal
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To create an easy to use onboarding process
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Allow users to connect with their character
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Quickly access different functions
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Create APP that would keep the student users coming back
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To create a avatar that would make user feel connected and invested in app
Usability Testing
We then began a user survey of the wire to learn about its shortcomings and usability. The first of our survey was done by me, where I had the user explain how they felt about the product in its early stages and if it was a product they would use in the future. This process took approximately 20 min. From this, we learned that our project had potential, and what stood out the most to that user.
Result&
Insights
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Users were OK with sharing personal information
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There were split opinions on the customizable avatar
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There was confusion about some buttons and their placement
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Users expected the calendar functionality to more closely match native calendar apps on their device
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Users felt overwhelmed by button options
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There were questions and concerns about location sharing
Onboarding
What is your first impression?
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Avatar is cool and interesting
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Too much text on Sign up screen
Friends Activity
What would you like to see on a friend's activity page?
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Better to have a pin feature to pin my favorite friends who can see my activity status
Calendar
How is the calendar use experience?
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Using process is a little complex but can understand how to use it
Map
What do you think about this function?
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Very informational and intuitive
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Useful for making new friends
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The add event flow is interesting
Customize
What do you think of customize?
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Not necessarily
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Should be better to include in the setting
We received impactful feedback that can be used to improve our product. Based on usability tests and heuristic evaluations, we improved our application by simplifying the calendar to resemble the iPhone calendar. This allows the user to have easy navigation time with less confusion. Second, we can consolidate the features so that users can navigate more easily. Expanding on the charter section of the app by allowing the custom character to interact more with the user and app could both be a way to teach the user how to use the app and make it feel integral to the experience
Colusion
The design should focus more on with the user in mind, providing a seamless and intuitive experience. The application need a better focus on user-friendly navigation and should aim to create a positive and engaging experience for Rutgers students. the end result should be encouraging them to stay connected and involved with their campus community.
To conclude, with the current pressing times, students, especially younger ones, have been facing a decline in their social ability. Our team was approached by Rutgers University to find a solution to this problem. Our team sought a solution to help students in the Rutgers community. During this process, we learned about the average Rutgers student and how we believed it would be the best way to help them.
We believe that we could help the students with a phone-based application that provides organization and active communication to all students and would allow them an easy way to locate and partake in club activities. The name of our app is called RU ready. Our team hopes in the future that we will have the opportunity to fully flesh out a final version of our application and assist the Rutgers student community.
My work
