CAL CENTRALIZED STUDENT CLUBS WEBSITE
Aisha Ergelen
The Problem
There are many student clubs on campus with different missions, recruitment processes, and application deadlines. There’s also always something happening on campus, be it a club social, meeting, or tabeling. This can be pretty overwhelming and hard to keep track of for most students. Thus the need for a regularly updated centralized platform that is very organized and houses all this information emerges.
HMW Statement
How might we enhance the experience of finding clear information about Berkeley student organizations?
Insights from User Research
After interviewing Cal students across different years and majors we came upon overarching insights :
1) Most students have encountered challenges/obstacles with club recruitment and finding information
2)Event dates are hard to keep track because clubs use many platforms
3)Calendar is a needed feature in a centralized platform
Notable quotes :
- There is a “need for a unified platform with features like calendar reminders, centralized applications, filtered event displays, and categorized types of clubs”
-the idea of a centralized app for student queries was suggested but “I hesitate about downloading another app”
User Persona and Journey Map
IDEATION
Divergent:
In the initial stage of ideation, I focused on quantity over quality and had many potential ideas to meet the needs of UC Berkeley students. My ideas ranged from online solutions such as having a single Instagram handle for all clubs to physical ones for example, having only one location on campus that had all the flyers for clubs. In the end, I noticed that all my solutions were trying to meet the same important student need for effectiveness and convenience.
Convergent :
Out of all my ideas, I wanted to move forward with a website design to make my solution practical. When doing club research or applying to clubs, many students use their laptops and do their research online. So I wanted to make sure my design was a website and not a mobile app. I refused to move forward with the single Instagram handle for all club ideas, because the information wouldn’t be as organized as if I had all that information on a website.
Low Fidelity Prototype
My low fidelity prototype only has one frame besides the main, because at first, I wasn't planning on creating frames for all buttons on the main page.
Insights from Usability Testing
1) It’s not clear what’s clickable and what’s not. Even if it’s a prototype, the audience still should get a clear sense of what buttons will end up being clickable.
2) There’s inconsistency in design and font.Some fonts are hard to read. Specifically, the font for the clubs after you click “All Clubs” on the main page.
3) The main page of the website is very precise and clear. Based on user testing, the viewer had the right expectations for where the buttons might lead them.
4) There’s no back button and a return button to the main page. It’s hard to view recruitment information after checking out the events for example
Visual design of product and Behance piece
The main changes I made in my high - fidelity prototype :
1) Added a back button to certain frames
2) Added a home page button to all the frames
3) I made the drop-down menu on the calendar frame bigger for convenience
4) My daily calendar view frame was missing the same drop-down menu the months calendar view had so added it on there as well. So now the tester is also able to switch from daily view to monthly view. Not just from monthly view to daily view.
5) Some clickable items did not appear as so, thus I underlined the text to tell the tester that they are in fact clickable and lead to a different page.
6) For the requirement tips page, I made it clearer that there’s a way to get to the specific recruitment page for all clubs. I changed the design of the left bar and included the title “Specific Recruitment”
7) Made all the fonts and shapes consistent
