OVERVIEW
The Testudo app will offer faculty staff members and students that are attending the University of Maryland a more valuable experience that connects them to the University. My team and I have conducted user interviews and accomplish usability testing to determine the efficiency/setbacks of the product. Our success metrics include the number of app downloads, number of times the app is accessed by users (compared to the visits on mobile vs. desktop), and user satisfaction.
SCOPE
My team and I are responsible for delivering a high-fidelity prototype of the Testudo app so that users can have access to it without operation hours. The app will include the most used features that our users note during user interviews and limit the features that aren’t noticed. Some limitations to our project are that we have no budget and the time constraint to create a high-fidelity prototype.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Designer
- Focus on app’s branding (logo, colors, etc.)
- Help enhance user experience
Researcher
- Conduct interviews/data on user preference
- Review web vs. mobile compatibilities
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The Testudo website contain many flaws in terms of the way it’s structured and produced. Students cannot easily use Testudo on their smartphones and, at times, beyond operation hours, which is crazy to think about. Even a professor had noted that she has tried to access Testudo when its services are unavailable, and the problem is that “I can never remember when it’s opened.” In addition, the website has many unnecessary features, which can be made more streamlined based on what is accessed most on the site.
PROPOSED SOLUTION
Our team has proposed to create a high-fidelity prototype of a Testudo app that will improve the user experience with accessing Testudo. This high-fidelity prototype could be used to conduct user interviews and usability testing where we will be able to further enhance the features that are most desired by users. The app won’t have operation hours and will streamline the features that are most valuable to the general student and faculty staff population that uses Testudo. This will help solve the accessibility problem that is currently attached to the website.
RESEARCH
GENERATIVE
We did generative research on the pros and cons of having mobile apps available. There are many published articles of studies that have proven the need for mobile applications because it’s easier for users to access, yet the increased in distractions with smartphones. With how technology is evolving and how society is changing day to day, more students will have quicker access to their smartphones than a desktop. We learned that most people are reliant on their mobile devices and it’s easier to have information on there because it’s something they are always carrying around. This is significant as it points out how it would be more convenient to have the ability to find your schedule on a app. This influenced our decision to create an app where we would put all the necessary items in a section along with tabs of other features that are most desired.
USER
Our team has conducted user interviews with faculty staffs and students at the University of Maryland. During this process, we learned more about the usage of Testudo and the features that are most/least desirable. This influenced our solution in terms of how we would like to present information on the app that we are creating. We want to find the valuable features that are mostly used to be right in front so it’s accessible for users and limit the useless features that take up space. Furthermore, we discovered a need to get rid of operation hours by always having student’s schedule available. This could mean including a schedule tab or drop-down so there’s no need to fish around to find the schedule.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
The current adaptation of Testudo is ONLY web-friendly and doesn’t consider the MOBILITY aspect.
As Testudo is heavily used by the University of Maryland students and staffs for several reasons, it’s quite inaccessible to users when they are out and about.
Does a website with time restraints make any sense?
One of the main problems that students and even professors have encountered with using Testudo is that the website has service hours that are unreasonable for a user that has a packed schedule. One’s inability to review their own schedule prior to attending the first week of classes is ridiculous as the website is not mobile friendly. Often times, users have even encounter not knowing about their operations hours so after work, they are unable to check up on their classes, grades, and such.
USER INTERVIEWS
My interviewees half of the time didn’t realize Testudo had closing hours until trying to log on during those inaccessible hours.
From my initial research of the usage of mobile devices, I’ve found it to be much more efficient for several reasons as majority of college students have access to their device while on campus. I’ve conducted interviews with two professors and 8 students who live on-campus. I’ve asked them questions below to gauge their knowledge and purpose for accessing Testudo.
Research Questions:
Tell me about whether you find Testudo essential to you as a University of Maryland student?
What about the website do you like and what do you dislike?
Has there ever been a time you were trying to access the website when the operation hours were not open? How did that make you feel?
What are your main purposes for accessing Testudo?
Do you think if the University provided a mobile app, you would use it more frequently? If so, why or why not?
DESIGN
LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
At our beginning stage, we created a low-fidelity prototype of how we would like to incorporate the most important features and lay them out so uses will be able to access what they need. Starting off we wanted everything to be relatively simple and easy to understand because the purpose of the app is for educational purposes. This would also be incorporated into the University’s branding, so we attempted to use University brand style while creating this prototype.
MEDIUM FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
From the low-fidelity prototype, we wanted to fill in some of the gray areas so that users can see where our vision is with what type of screens, we anticipated on adding. First, we thought the home page could be The Diamondback news so that students can have access to the latest UMD news. Two important ideas we had was to separate the campus and student services that are offered to them. This will make the information way more organized so that students can easily search for what they need. More importantly, the campus services have been linked so they can easily go to the website to find more information on specific campus services. Lastly, the value of our app focuses mainly on the user’s ability to access their schedule at any time of the day. Therefore, we have two screens for the schedule where it could be viewed as calendar or list style.
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
As you can see this is our fully functional high-fidelity prototype where users can access all the services that they find valuable. We were able to address the initial problem here as the app is accessible 24/7 so that students can view their schedule whenever. More importantly, the information is formatted and displayed nicely on their devices so that there isn’t any awkward spacing or clustered of information. This application is nice because there are no competitors as we are only trying to incorporate a new idea within the university to make ti simpler for users to find valuable information.
TESTING + IMPROVEMENTS
I made 3 major improvements to our design
Based on the feedback we received, we got rid of unnecessary tabs and were able to incorporate the common values our users were most looking forward to
Get rid of profile page
- Found this to be unnecessary as this is a personal app where the data is specified to the student
- There isn’t a need to connect with other students so a profile with your information isn’t really going to be used as often
Confusion between services that are provided by the University and services that will be connected to the individual
- Incorporated two screens of services: student services and campus services
- Distinguish the services that pertained to the student services such as their advising schedules
- Access to campus services such as bus routes, dining services, counseling, and health center information
Schedule viewing ability
- We noticed that sometimes especially on a smaller mobile device, looking at your schedule can be much simpler through only providing the information you need at the moment
- This led to a daily schedule tab where students can access their schedule on a specific dat
- Get rids of overcrowding of information and feeling overwhelmed at looking at their own schedule
- Ability to view more in-depth information about each course through a tap, which is more convenient
CONCLUSION + LESSONS LEARNED
For the future, I would like to see if this would be something students are interested in and whether the university would take interest into adapting this app. I believe it will be more valuable to conduct a few more usability testing so that users can get a feel for how the app works and we can examine their process. Therefore, if this app were to be truly adapted and published, we would be able to access the metrics of success through the number of downloads. We can also determine whether the online website is still accessed more often than the mobile version to assess how well the design of the app is.
What I’d do differently…
This was my first-ever UX project where I was going through each step of the entire process with a team. After finishing this process, I believe that there are still much we can improve further on.
Focus on the user experience and what users would want to see
A problem our team originally struggled with when starting this project and prepping our user interviews was that we were leading the users to a conclusion that we had felt was true, such as only focusing on the bad aspects of Testudo instead of also considering the positive sides that users have experienced on it.
Be flexible
This project was a long process full of iteration and development on how we can improve the website through a mobile application.