MY PRIMARY ROLE: UI/UX design, UX research, Prototyping
TEAM: Miranda M., Stefan L., Shahroz Z., Keti D.
TOOLS: Figma, Miro, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
TIMELINE: 12 weeks
PROBLEM: Navigating the system to access sports and recreation at the University was a maze.
USER RESEARCH: We collected 30 survey results and conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with representative students regarding their experience at various recreational facilities across campus: Athletic Centre, Hart House Gym, and the Goldring Centre. We found that 22 out of 30 students (70%) found it difficult to access the facilities. One of our interviewees stated: “With my heavy course load, it's impossible to plan to work out 2 days ahead at an exact hour.”
From the research, we identified themes that were holding students back. Themes ranged from personal, social, to physical barriers such as:
- Inability to find information as it was scattered across various websites and sources
- Being intimidated by gym culture and thus feeling unmotivated to go
- Getting lost around campus as there were many facilities each with their system
The word “maze” came up several times in our interviews to describe the current system.
DESIGN QUESTION: How might we remove barriers and increase the ease of access to recreational resources at the University of Toronto? Especially for new students who are new to it all.
HUMAN-CENTERED APPROACH:
Persona: Neven the New Student
Through this data, we created a persona to gain a deeper understanding of our user's needs. Here, we have Neven the New Student. Who is a 24-year-old non-binary Asian Canadian student who is pursuing a Master's in biochemistry at U of T.
What does Neven need?
Neven needs a way to easily sift through all the sports and rec activities so that they can find and sign up for the activities they are most interested in.
Neven needs a way to use the sport and rec facilities when it’s convenient for them so that they can seamlessly fit exercising into their busy schedule.
Neven needs a way to use the exercise facilities without feeling intimidated so that they can relieve stress from school and life.
Journey Mapping
Neven’s current journey and a proposed streamlined journey.
IDEATION: We started brainstorming ideas using sketches and stickies that we then organized into an affinity diagram to find themes. These themes were used to create key features. After that, we used the prioritization grid to vote all of our ideas against their impact and feasibility. This was done to narrow down the ideas to achievable tasks within our scope.
PROTOTYPING:
3 Key Features for prototyping:
- Discover programs of interest
- Book with friends
- Fit exercise into a busy schedule
Iteration 1: Lo-fi prototype
In the initial prototyping stage, we started with hand-drawn sketches to articulate the features we want to bring to life. Lots of the design discussions and collaboration happened at this stage where each member brought forward their vision of the execution details.
Once we reach a consensus, we consolidated all of our low-fidelity screens in a single storyboard. We conducted a lean evaluation with a few users to uncover functional details, usability and areas of improvement.
Evaluate:
We did 3 usability tests and 2 semi-structured interviews to ensure what we are designing is comprehensible and on track with user needs. For our user testing, we had 3 participants each move through 3 of the main workflows we designed. We combined and analyzed the constructive feedback in Miro and grouped them next to the screens where changes were needed with a prioritization scale.
Key evaluation feedback:
“Booking with a friend is really helpful - we can exercise together!”
“It’s a lot easier to find and see the schedule!”
“I’m confused why there are favourites at the top and bottom of the screen”
“Apply filter at the bottom of the filter page would be useful”
Iteration 2: Mid-fidelity prototype
Given the feedback from our users, we evaluate them and implemented the ones that aligned with our users’ needs and hill statements. And then moved our design into a clickable medium fidelity prototype to conduct another round of usability testing for more feedback.
NEXT STEPS: The next steps are (1) to conduct additional usability testing, and (2) to develop a high-fidelity prototype. Design is an iterative process; thus, we will also continue cycling through design, prototyping, and evaluating in further developing our project.
