Google Design Challenge 2021
Overview
This project was done for Google's recruitment process which requires the completion of a design challenge based on one prompt out of the given ones.
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Duration: 1 week
Role: User Research and Synthesis, User Testing, Prototyping
Tools Used: Miro, Figma
Chosen Prompt
Your school is gearing up to welcome a new incoming class and would like to help them adjust to campus life. Design an experience that allows new students to ask questions about the school life, and experienced students to share answers and advice. Consider the needs of a student who has questions and the experience for a student who would like to give advice.
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Preliminary Problem Synthesis
When thinking about the experience of a new student coming to campus for the very first time, the thing that stands out to me is the abundance of new information and resources that becomes overwhelming for a person that has undergone an ecology shift. Added to this, they may not have a prior contact or experience with the university that can otherwise act as a source of stability and reassurance.
With that, I had some preliminary guiding statements to aid my research after breaking down the prompt a little bit -
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Help new students feel comfortable with forming connections for help
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Encourage experienced students to lend a helping hand (according to the prompt, the platform has students who do want to help).
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Easing the transition from high school to a large campus setting and reduce anxiety about university life (academic and social contexts).
So who are my users?
There is a considerable ecology to keep in mind for an incoming freshman into university. I chose to map out some of the users involved in the journey of a freshman new on campus in the context of Purdue University.​
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The first interaction a freshman has with the university and its people for the most part, is during the orientation program (Boiler Gold Rush).
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As a result, if they choose to participate, they are assigned a Team Leader that reaches out to them before coming to campus, and their RA (Resident Assistant) if they live in the dorms. These are likely their very first student connections in the university.
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A freshman can be -
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1. An international student who has never been on campus or in the country before.
2. A domestic student who has never lived independently, but partook in the campus tours before the new term.
Experienced students encompass orientation TLs and supervisors, Resident Assistant, University Student Ambassadors, and the rest of the student populace that has been around for a semester or more.
How might we provide a resource for new students to empower themselves by taking initiative to learn and live independently in a community?
Initial Research
I looked into factors that inculcate more participation and engagement with the community and resources for new students through literature reviews, and was able to come up with some broad themes that I arrived to by making an affinity diagram:
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1. Social recognition and gratification is a huge driving force for rewarding and encouraging modes of participation.
2. It is important to foster a sense of belonging to promote emotional and behavioral engagement. Students need to be welcomed and shown that there is a place for them in the larger community.
3. In terms of engagement, passive participation is not a disadvantage. Seeing others receiving feedback and responses acts as a stepping stone towards engaging in active participation. Passive learning is still learning.
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The need and role of an audience is a factor that ties in these themes together.
How are existing applications being used by this population?
For this, I looked into existing social media platforms that were being used for students to communicate and get the information they needed, and wrote down the positives and negatives of each in this context.
Some of the overlapping problems were as follows:
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1. The information pool was too generic. There is a lack of consolidated resource-gathering.
2. The presence of groups was an anomaly because it required someone else to add you to it - information from these groups is inaccessible otherwise. This defeats the situational construct of not having prior support.
3. While there is a large pool of people to connect with, there is no context or basis for initiating that relationship.
There is a lack of personalization in the information exchange that could otherwise prompt formation of helpful connections, and maximize learning.
That brought me to - what are my users saying?
In order to get valuable qualitative insights from these different user groups, I conducted interviews with the following people:
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4 Orientation Team Leaders
2 Orientation Supervisors
2 Resident Assistants
6 Freshmen
3 Experienced Students (Sophomores, Juniors)
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Interviews give me the range and flexibility of asking new questions based on responses, and receive more meaningful data. For that reason, I focused my questioning on how new students connect with experienced students in leadership roles versus what those not in leadership roles take from such an interaction.
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I then was able to consolidate some pain points and needs for these groups in such a context by forming connections through affinity diagramming.
Overview of my sense-making based on interview insights.
So what did I learn from this?
Motivations for Experienced Students and Leaders
Needs for New Students
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There is a sense of wanting to give back.
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They experience feelings of gratification by being able to serve as a bridge between a new student and the shared campus, and create an atmosphere of anticipation.
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Development of leadership skills.
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Requirement of an active and curious audience.
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Wanting to gain a sense of independence.
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Feeling of reassurance that they have someone to turn to.
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They need to find the right people to ask certain questions.
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Need for audience and community to feel like they can engage.
Pain Points for Experienced Students and Leaders
Pain Points for New Students
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They may not be the right person with the right information.
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They may not be knowledgeable enough on the topic of questioning.
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Might make the new student feel like they're talking down on them.
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It is hard to know whether students have any questions or concerns if they don't say so.
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They experience feelings of inadequacy for not understanding how to make use of overwhelming number of resources.
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There is a hesitance in wanting to directly ask questions for fear of sounding "dumb."
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Lack of a reliable and relatable contact that can act as a resource for navigating university life.
Who do I need to design for?
College freshmen that live in university residences but did not attend the orientation program, Boiler Gold Rush (BGR), and so do not have any formal introduction to campus, its resources, living independently, and "first contacts."
College freshmen as a whole is the broad user group, but this subset has more gaps in the experience of adjusting to their new ecology.
Users can see to what topic questions are posted and directly click them to view all posts under that topic. When posting questions, users get to choose which subtopic they are seeking answers from, and may do so anonymously as well. They can save specific questions that they want to revisit later for answers, and will be notified when it is done so.
Based on all my research and identified pain points, I came up with some experience principles to guide my ideation and final designs.
Final Problem Statement -
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Creating a communication platform extension that can be built on the university's existing guide app to help new students seek information on specific topics, be assured of getting feedback from people familiar with the area of concern, and connect with them based on an algorithm of similar interests and experiences on campus.
Ideation and Design
After several rounds of ideation, I fixed on a concept I wanted to use to power my communication platform, and created a basic user flow for it.
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1. An algorithm powered by information drawn from the student's records at Purdue to automate the process. It would draw information like the classes students had signed up for, and any other clubs or positions they held during their time at the university. This is so that there is a productive exchange of information between the new student and the experienced student because of common topics, interests, and experiences.
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2. Community discussion powered by separation of topics for more consolidated posts and review.
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3. Visibility of engagement to draw in passive participants to be more active.
User Testing and Validation
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In order to evaluate my designs, I conducted usability tests through paper prototyping with an RA-Freshman pair and a Junior-Freshman pair.
The main concern was to not overwhelm the user with too many options and routes on their first entry into this app, but the overall response was positive when I explained that this was meant to be integrated into the existing resources app developed by Purdue.
Final Solution
An extension to Purdue Guide that allows Purdue students to search for answers in a systematic and organized manner, have greater visibility for new students to find experienced students with common interests or things they want to work towards over their term at university, and create a sense of community through engagement and personality.
Onboarding Experience
Discover
Community Feed and Posting
Experienced Student Reply
Student Profile
Students can see others' profiles to determine who to reach out to for help or guidance corresponding to their needs and the others' experience.
Time to Reflect
The timeline of one week was very limiting, especially coupled with regular schoolwork. I do feel like this is not by best work by virtue of having to sacrifice quality and order because of a time crunch. This caused me to be more limiting in my thought process and approach than I would have liked, and really made me appreciate the beauty of how this very same project could be carried out over an entire semester with entirely different results.
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This challenge opened my eyes to the value of personal experience and immersion because I was able to connect a lot of my own experiences when thinking through the entire journey, and also gain new perspectives of the same context from the people I interviewed.
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I do wish I had more time to evaluate and test - this is not something I was able to engage with to a large extent due to conflicting arrangements and remote conditions over a short amount of time.