Figma prototype linked here
Initial Stages
Brainstorming, User Persona, Storyboard, and Sketches
Are you part of any clubs on campus/what do you participate in outside of academics?
Can you describe a typical week at NU for you?
In general, does NU make you feel lost? Why?
When you have a question about how to do something or where something is or how something works at NU, how do you try to answer that question?
Recall a time recently when something about NU was unclear or unknown to you. What was it?
What happened? How did not knowing the answer impact you? (got in the way of you doing something, your success, wellbeing, etc.)
Did you figure out how to resolve it or find resources to answer your questions?
Do you have any past experience with the Mentorhub app (a mentor app promoted by the university)? If yes: can you describe your experiences with it? If no: why haven’t you used it?
What are the top three things at NU that you lack information about?
student interview questions
applying the research
One of my main challenges was organizing the app's many questions into intuitive categories. To do so, I compiled a list of 50 of the most commonly asked NU-related questions via interviews and various social media. Then, I asked three different people to sort the questions into however many categories they felt was appropriate and name each one accordingly. Using that information, I created the final categories that would be used on the app.
The decisions that I made regarding the categories themselves also influenced the design of the app. I made several iterations of the home screen where the user was presented with the categories, and I ended up choosing the layout that started off with just two options (on campus or off campus questions) followed by a more detailed breakdown, so as not to overwhelm the user with too many choices right at the start.
Next, I developed two of the home page options into a few screens and tested if users would choose the intended categories if they were trying to answer each of the following questions:
How do I print?
How does Outtakes work?
How do I balance my work and social life?
I refined my design choices according to the user response that I received and developed my top two home pages into hifi mockups. Once I chose which of the hifi's I preferred, I began further user research, testing, iterating, as well as researching existing forums and comments sections, such as the New York Times, Reddit, and Facebook.
Shape of the buttons for categories: want them to look clickable but not tacky
Hierarchy of text in the forum: made replies more transparent, the reply a bright orange call to action, name of the user smaller than their message, and date sent even smaller than that
Added Reddit-like guiding line in one conversation so you can tell which messages are tied together
Orange bar at the bottom of every screen to let you know you’ve reached the end
Filtering/sorting posts
main changes after user testing
Main source of information: asking around
Nobody utilizes NU resources, especially not MentorHub
There's a feeling of missing out, because there’s always a lot happening but no good information sources
People are focused on trying to make good use of their time; they want to participate in a lot of activities, but they don't want to waste time tracking down people who might have answers to their questions
main takeaways
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Pop up that says you’ll be notified if someone likes your post or replies
More screens in the prototype so more buttons are clickable and the prototype is more realistic
No text behind "type here" bar so user isn't distracted
Replying to a thread opens only that thread, so you can’t be distracted by other posts
Buttons bigger and easier to tap
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Ask Away!
2023 | interaction design
This is a prototype of a forum app for Northeastern underclassmen. It serves as a space for newer students to talk to upperclassmen and reliably get all of their NU-related questions answered in one place. Ask Away! incentivizes upperclassmen to answer questions by letting them earn prizes, like free food, for certain quantities of helpful answers. The main goal of creating this app was to learn how to iterate using user research and feedback to create an intuitive app flow for a real, specific target audience at Northeastern.
The process of creating this app included the following steps: brainstorming of content and features, creation of a user persona, a storyboard, and hunch sketches, followed by wireframes and hi-fi mockups.
The prototype below depicts the one flow I designed, which responds to a particular user goal: to find out how to print on Northeastern campus. It is built for a Samsung Galaxy S10e screen, as the class did not focus on responsive design. A detailed description of my work process is included below.