Samantha Chandra
DH199: UX Research - Winter 2020
1. Research Methods
Competitive Analysis
I looked at what students already use to navigate campus and other products designed to solve this problem (see Previous Works Section in my Literature Review)
User Interviews
I interviewed 5 UCLA students from different backgrounds and class levels to understand their pain points, needs, and user journey
Card Sorting
I used a card sorting activity with 5 participants to understand how they categorize student clubs. This will help in designing the categorization of student clubs in the app.
2. User Interviews
My initial research conducted in my previous quarter (DH150) found the "people" aspect is a primary drive for students to join and stay within a club. I also found that an overwhelming number of students do not rely on official resources when navigating the campus landscape official student and this process is uniformly stressful for most students (see the full research here).
To build upon the existing data, this time I decided to conduct in-depth interviews with 5 students. These interviews focus on the tools that they used when executing two jobs: (1) finding clubs to join and (2) finding events to attend. I also tried to extract their feelings, perceptions, and motivations while going through these two scenarios with them.
The following is the bios of my interviewees, whom I believe would give me a holistic perspective of the user journey:
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Freshman, male, Business Economics. Ambitious, professionally driven, eager.
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Freshman, female, Global Studies. Organized, international, lived in many countries before.
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Sophomore, female, Economics & Communications. Social and driven.
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Senior, female, Neuroscience. Quirky, quiet, introverted.
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Senior, female, Cognitive Science. A student leader, very involved.
I really enjoyed this process as I learned the full journeys of my interviewees. As a student myself, it was refreshing to hear other perspectives. I also found it interesting to compare the insights of freshmen and seniors.
If I were to do this exercise again, I would try to achieve more gender balance. In addition, I think I reached out to students who are already super active in student life, thus the answers may be a bit biased.
3. Results Summary - User Interviews
The interview focused on:
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How much do student organizations play a role in a student's community?
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How do students view student clubs?
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What are the tools used for clubs and events discovery? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
I created an Affinity Wall to analyze the patterns uncovered from my interviews. Here are some of my key findings:
Students join organizations to develop their interests and to find a community.
The two forces (interests vs. people) keep coming up in interviews, and students tend to narrow down their search for clubs by interests. However, the people aspect decides retention and loyalty.
Students feel very stressed when navigating this process.
All interviewees described the process to be overwhelming, stressful, and intimidating, primarily because of lack of information and transparency.
A good filter and search tool is needed for clubs and events.
Given the size of UCLA, it is imperative for students to be able to do a focused search as it keeps them from being overwhelmed and it is also more time-efficient.
Students want a holistic picture of the student organizations.
Beyond what the organization does, students are interested in its culture, member, and personality.
There is no way to get a full picture of all the events happening on campus; event discovery is lacking.
Most discovery comes from network and word of mouth, causing students to miss out on events outside of their circle.
Analysis of top tools used to find student organizations
Something to consider is that students seem to value two things:
(1) ability to meet the club members in person
(2) having a full list of clubs and orgs to explore, especially the freshmen
Analysis of top tools used to find events on campus
The main thing to note here is event discovery is mainly digital.
Like me, everyone mainly uses Facebook to discover, RSVP, and find friends also attending the event. I will keep Facebook's event tool in mind as I design my prototype.
4. Card Sorting Results
I also did a card sorting exercise to provide a starting point on how to categorize the clubs and events (for the filter function). I used Optimal Workshop to create the survey and recruited 5 participants. The participants were asked to sort different subcategories or hashtags such as "visual art", "creative writing", "sports", "finance", etc.
Some of the groups that the participants suggested are the following (not exclusive):
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Athletes
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Business
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Creatives
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Entrepreneurs
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Tech
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Engineering
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Finance
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Professionals/Leadership
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Community Service
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Humanities
It was difficult to come up with a universal categorization because everyone viewed things very differently. Some participants produced up to 16 categories. At the end, for the low-fidelity prototype, I decided to come up with 5 main categories: "arts", "leadership", "career", "recreation," and "academics".
A screenshot of the groupings from one of the participants
4. Building Empathy - User Personas
Based on my user interviews, I also created 5 personas based on my interviewees. For each persona, I outlined their priorities, motivations, pain points, and the tools that they would most likely use.
Scenario for Michael
Michael is a freshman that has just gotten admitted to UCLA. He is very excited and anxious at the same time to start his college career. He wants to make sure that he is ready and can get up to speed. A month before UCLA starts classes, Michael logs into CampusClub and browses through the clubs on campus. He follows a lot of business and running clubs. He learns through the "Trending on Campus" function which are the "big, competitive clubs" and what he needs to do to prepare himself to get accepted. When he arrives at UCLA, he knows which clubs he wants to talk to during the Enormous Activities Fair, and even recognizes some of their members. Michael does not feel as lost, and transitions into campus easily. He even ends up joining some of the clubs he followed!
Scenario for Ashley
Ashley has been at UCLA for a year now, and she has developed a good network on campus. She is quite has several leadership positions in clubs. However, she begins to feel that her college career is one dimensional - she only knows the business sphere and has no idea what goes on beyond that. At the start of her sophomore year, Ashley browses for clubs and events that align with her other area of interests. Although she wants to explore, she needs something that is not very time consuming as she has lots of responsibilities. By reading some club pages, she is able to find low commitment, fun clubs like the writing club that meets once a week. Whenever possible, Ashley RSVPs to their events and slowly develops a network outside of the business sphere.
Scenario for Sarah
This is Sarah's last year in college and she wants to attend more events on campus with her friends. She has found her community in her dancing group, which she discovers through CampusClub when she was a freshman by searching the keyword "dance". Now, she uses the app again to look at trending events on campus, and sometimes filtering for artistic/dance-related events. One day, she finds a Hawaii Club cultural night. She feels uncomfortable going to events alone, though. Using the app, Sarah can see which of her friends are going to that event. She messages her friend and arranges to go together. Sarah is glad that she can experience more on campus with her close friends before she graduates.
Scenario for Irena
Irena is a very busy student leader. Irena always sees fun events on campus, but she always forgets about them even ater indicating her interest on Facebook. As a result, Irena almost only goes to events that she is hosting or events where she has to represent her club. On a weekend, Irena finds a cool concert being held in Ackerman Union. She RSVPs using CampusClub and the event is automatically put into her calendar on the app. The night before the event, she gets a notification reminding her of the event and letting her know which of her friends will be there. Irena is motivated to go and finally goes to the event! Since then, Irena always uses CampusClub to manage her meetings and events.
