StudyLink
Problem
Finding study spaces that fit students' requirements for noise level, number of spaces, time constraints, and group study of particular topics is a difficult task that does not have a comprehensive solution connecting desired conditions with community. We set out to change that.
Solution
After extensive interviews, observations, tweaks to our problem statement, hundreds of ideas generated, and iteration we created a prototype for a mobile app and digital system for reserving study spaces, building community around study topics, and filtering spaces by desired conditions.
Impact
The impact StudyLink has is to connect groups of people and build community around an unexpected activity, one which is usually thought of as an unwanted obligation. With StudyLink, students would no longer waste up to 45 minutes finding the right spot, and can more effectively learn their topics through collaboration. It would also help universities to save money by reinvigorating their existing study spaces as opposed to building new ones.
For a more detailed breakdown of the project, processes, and pictures of the prototypes, see below.
Problem
Finding a spot to study can pose a problem almost as difficult as studying itself for university students at institutions around the country. Many factors including crowds, noise level, light level, and many more come into play.
My team's question was this: How can we create better study conditions for more students while at the same time connecting more students with each other in a way that builds community and facilitates a more efficient use of the space that our universities already have?
Rackham Graduate Study hall at the University of Michigan (center) and the rules that govern it (sides)
Observations
I completed 5 hours of observations at 5 distinct study spaces on campus utilizing several observation frameworks (POEMS, Ax4, AEIOU) along with my 3 other teammates for a total of 20 hours of user observations.
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We synthesized the observations individually by answering the questions "What surprised you during your observations?", "What did you see people struggling with?", "Did anything you saw alter or confirm the problem statement?", "Who were your users?".
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This is the sheet I did my observations in for the Rackham Reading Room, notice the sheets at the bottom with different locations and different observation methodologies.
Interviews
In groups of 2 my team and I interviewed 4 lead users for our problem, University of Michigan students. I conducted one interview and for another I took notes for my teammate. We reached out to two graduate students and two undergrad students, two male and two female in order to get a representative spread of our users.
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We generated the questions as a group such that they were Socratic and open-ended. We needed to investigate if the problem was as we saw it or if we were off the mark, and if so, what were we missing.
Interview Synthesis
We began our synthesis with a digital affinity wall of qualitative data points that stuck out to us while reading back through our interview notes and listening to our interview recordings.
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We categorized our data points into groups you can see in the photo below to organize our thinking around the problem.
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We realized we needed to adjust our problem statement from "Flexible spaces are in high demand but low supply, so reserving, finding, and using a place is hard, how can we provide as many students as possible with places that satisfactorily serve their study needs whether individually or in teams?" to "Flexible spaces are in high demand but low supply during the busiest times of the day, and external factors can take away even more of the usable study space. Thus, finding a place to study that meets desired noise- and comfort-levels is challenging. How can we create ideal conditions for as many students as possible with places that serve their study needs both individually and in groups, without building all new study spaces?" due to the realization that we had overlooked the affect of motivation, community, and other environmental factors on studying, how could we tackle that more directly instead?
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We found that users are already using their own methods to increase their community and utilize their network to get help and secure spaces.
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This is a digital affinity wall we created as a team, each color sticky note represents data points from different interviewees and observations (key in top left). The boxes around the sticky notes represent the groupings into different factors of the problem. The lines between notes and boxes represent relationships.
Personas
With a better picture of what our users struggle with and care about in regards to their studying, we felt confident enough to put together 2 personas to design for. They were the "clients" for our team and they started to be the guides for our exploration of the solution space.
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I added the tension sliders in the upper right hand of the personas to offer another way to think about Mary and Juanito's personalities and what tensions are at play when they're looking for a spot and studying. I also came up with quotes for each persona to capture the insights we gleaned from interviews and other research in a succinct statement. This helped us to think about what solutions they may be interested in.
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Juanito and Mary are personas we created after immersion in and synthesis of the data we collected. These persona sheets are meant to give an idea of what's important to them in regards to studying and how their personalities come into play.
Stakeholder Map
Before diving into the solution space, my team and I decided to put together a visual map of stakeholders involved in the problem we were solving. This would force us to think of considerations involved in the concepts beyond the lead user, including cost, maintenance, feasibility, key decision makers, and others.
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Associations or connections which are more directly related to the lead user and main problem being solved are denoted with thicker lines, larger circles, and darker colors. The thinner, smaller, and more faded the lines and circles are, the more tangential the relation.
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This is a stakeholder map we made as a team in a collaborative online tool. The bigger and darker the circles the closer they are to the problem. The thicker the lines, the more connected the stakeholders are to eachother.
Concept Generation
We began our concept generation process by each team member individually coming up with 100 ideas for ways to create engaging and productive study spaces. We followed the ideation rules of not judging other peoples ideas, coming up with wild and crazy ideas, and quantity over quality. our ideas ranged from artificial indoor beaches to outdoor bike-cafés meandering through the city.
The team came together with everyone's ideas (written or sketched) to discuss which ideas solved the identified problem in the most novel ways. We all chose our top 10 ideas and moved ahead with a concept that we determined to best solve the problem in the most easily implementable way. We ended up incorporating several ideas into the concept we chose to move ahead with prototyping. We combined a way to show other people what you're working on/your status and an interconnected reservation system for the existing study spaces and study groups.
Here are some of the concept screens and incentives I prototyped for our system. These were used to show to a team of colleagues (who happened to be target users) to get feedback. Notice the range of wild ideas
Below are some sketches of concepts for interactions with the StudyLink system
A "stock market for studying" index, showing topics being studied where, snacks and other "resources" for trade, along with trends
A sketch of the "local" screen used to reserve a spot at its physical location, with different options for collaboration, templates to show, and a calendar.
Sketch of the main screens within the libraries and other buildings with StudyLink organization. Availability, a map of the space, and an index of topics are conceptualized.
A sketch showing concepts for possible physical embodiments of StudyLink organization.
Final Prototype
Our prototype consisted of a quick and simple wire frame of the mobile and in-locus interactions depicting the processes of searching for different spot characteristics, study groups, study topics, and reservations of study spots. The prototype also incorporates a set of templates to display at each study space to let people know how the space is being used. They range from "Do not disturb" to "Looking for a person to bounce ideas off of".
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Other functionalities include messaging and matching with people on the app that are studying topics that the user needs help with, organized in a sort of stock exchange format. The resources in this exchange are help with studying, but could be expanded to snacks and many other things the "market" develops.
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I created the lo-fi wireframe interaction screens seen in the below images.
These three screens show the interactions for sorting the available study spaces by several different characteristics.
These two screens show a similar interaction, showing the actively studied topics near you. You could message the students and coordinate a study session through the app if you needed help with those topics.