Dibs - Case Study
Overview
Personal Project, Duration: 2 weeks
Why this project?
It wasn’t too long ago that I had left university… One of the pain points I remember to this day is where I would be able to find a space to study in. During that time, not only me but other university students were really struggling to find an appropriate space to do work in. I want to build an application that allows for an easier way of finding a space.My Role
User ResearchIdentifying PersonaContent StrategyWireframingPrototypingUser Testing
The Design Process
What’s out there?
This part was a bit challenging because I couldn’t exactly find a direct competitor within this space. When googling for what was out there, this is what I got: Dedicated university spacesCafesPublic spaces - e.g. libraries“How to set up your desk for studying at home” - surprisingly A LOT of theseCo-working spaces
Here are some secondary competitors 
What do I want to find out?
What are people’s motivation in wanting to find a place to study?
Are there any challenges or frustrations with finding a place to study?What does their current process look like?
Conversations with people
Guerrilla Interviews - 7 university students from RMIT University/University of Melbourne
Insights:
Getting students to openly talk is a lot harder than I thoughtSome people don't have issues continuously looking for a spotThere are varied motivations on why people studyNot so much about finding an available space, but more about the environment of the spaceDepending on how far campus is, people are more inclined to study from home
Ok…not the responses I initially assumed…am I out of touch???
I had to go back and re-evaluate because looking for a study space doesn’t appear to be such a big of a deal. Going through my interviews, I quickly noticed that people were talking about finding a space for individual study and issues generally arise when it came to group study. I had a number of planned interviews coming up and so I changed my plan to find out more about the challenges with group study.
Planned Interviews - 8 university students from Swinburne University/Monash University
Insights:
Students opened up a lot more in planned interviewsNo major issues with finding a spot to study for individual studyConcerns arise from conducting group studySpaces not available or appropriate to accommodate for all members of the groupStudents prefer to find a space on campus or very close by
Bringing it all together
Insights:
A lot of students get distracted studying from home and prefer to study on campusStudents study on campus to be more productiveStudents study so that they can get a good careerSome students want to do good workTwo types of students - those who plan ahead on where to study on campus and those who wander around in the moment to find a space
Main painpoints are:
Hard to find a space for group studyChallenging finding a collaborative spaceHuge distractions when working in non accomodating areas
Persona
Sam, 2nd year university student studying bachelor of I.T
Scenario:
There are a number of group work this semester and the projects are all hurdles. This isn’t too big of a deal because Sam strives to do good work on all her projects anyway. Sam can tell that a lot of group work will need to occur outside of class and is concerned that they won’t be able to find a good collaborative space that is accommodating. Needs:
Wants to be able to find an accommodating space right awayDoesn’t want to walk around aimlessly looking for a space
Motivations:
Wants to be able to do well for the assignment
Eager to learn
Painpoints:
Group spaces are generally always taken
Wastes time looking for an available space
Strategy
Branding Strategy
What? A mobile web app that allows for students to conveniently find a space
How?Creating a web app interface that allows for students to quickly and easily search for a space
Why? The purpose of this app is to enable students to productively collaborate to achieve great things.
Content Strategy
User Needs
Students need a collaborative spaceTo be able to find a space right awayGet right away to doing their group work
The content I need:
Room name
Room type
Availability
Whiteboard
Location
Business Goals (the university institution)
Get more students to their institutionMore students attending, means more revenue
No. of power point
No. of seats
No. of PCs
No. tables
Wall space
Problem Statement
Students need a way to find an appropriate space so that they can work collaboratively.
How Might We
…efficiently find an appropriate space to collaboratively work?
Design Studio
I found this part of the project quite challenging because design studios are generally collaborative and I had to do this one on my own. I found that to get me moving, I drew down what the pages on the app were going to look like. There wasn’t a lot of content at the time so that made it easier to get down what the screens would look like.
Userflow
The flow of the rough screens really aided me when it came to putting down a user flow on paper. The process is easy and linear however I ended up ending the process with “book room”. It made sense at the time however, I’m not designing a booking feature…the purpose of the app is to display a list of rooms that are available right now.
Hypothesis
We believe that by creating this web application for university students, we will enable students to efficiently find a room to do collaborative work.
We will know this to be true when students are consistently returning to the app to look for a space.
The Solution
By having a web app, students can easily access this app on their mobile phones through a browser. They’ll be able to enter their details and the app will give them a list of available rooms that they can choose from.
Paper Prototyping
I had to revisit the problem and user needs - the goal is to find a room…for now.
Insights:
Conducted 6 tests overall
The flow of the application worked fine
Information on the room details needed to be reorganised
Home screen was a bit confusing because there was already some items there - people didn’t know where to navigate
The search criteria wasn’t very clear
Displaying a calendar as a room detail meant that people thought to book in advanced
Confirmation wasn’t very clear
I went through 3 iterations until the prototype got to a point where people understood how to navigate around the app without too much confusion.
Let’s get digital
I was able to achieve mid fidelity wireframes with the results from the paper prototyping. I was able to conduct 3 user tests. Insights: some parts of the rom detail had too much text - got confusingdynamic data vs. static datareorganisation of data when the room lists appear
Hifi Wireframes
Next Steps
Proposing this solution to universities and being able to test with real data to see what the results lead
Further branding to move onto high fidelity prototypes
There is potential to expand to other users, even outside of students
Learnings
Solo projects are difficult. I’m used to working in a team and being able to bounce ideas off each other. However, it was definitely a fun project to do because it’s something I wish existed two years ago when I was still at university. The interviewing process was a rollercoaster but I definitely saw the light at the end of the tunnel when I re-evaluated my research strategy. I’m more confident with asking questions and making the interview more conversational.
For this particular project, I really wanted to delve into a bit of content strategy. Although it was very foreign at the beginning, it definitely helped with laying the foundations of why this product exits and what the purpose of it was. This was especially useful when defining what my MVP was. I can definitely see how features can creep up on you, but looking back at what the user goals are - was able to narrow it down and the solution ended up being very simple. For now anyway.