My Contribution
Tools
Timeline
8 Months
Summary
The Problem
Solution
An efficient new reservation website includes a step-by-step process, editing, and quick booking capabilities.
Background
IUPUI Library has over 35 individual and group study rooms on Levels 2, 3, and 4. Room students must make reservations in advance to ensure 1st priority.
Every school year the university study room portal was underutilized by students
Each year the study room portal was underutilized by 30%, which lead the university to wanting to investigate why student were not using the study room portal. We collaborated with the IUPUI library UX designers to understand why students weren't using the portal.
My Role and Team
Collaborated with the User Experience Librarian from IUPUI Library
I was the lead UX designer of three designers. I led the redesign of the student study room portal and worked with the IUPUI User Experience Librarian at the IUPUI Library on project and status updates.
User Research
Survey
We contacted 50 students to gain insight into their experience with the current reservation systems and recruit participants for our later usability testing.
We found out that students didn’t use the website or didn’t know there was a study room website. The students who used it only used it for group projects.
Usability Testing
The overarching problem students faced in the reservation system was its overwhelming and confusing process.
We did 6 moderated Usability tests to observe, interview, and analyze how students interact with the study room website in real-time. It was challenging to record how the testing was done, but we did a pair of two people: one will moderate the test, and a second person will record the test findings.
Student Interviews
Students are looking for a less overwhelming and confusing process that doesn’t involve them being overloaded with information from the start.
We interviewed six students and divided the users into those who have used the study room website before and those who have not used it.
Using an affinity diagram, students feel the current reservation website was too hard to learn, confusing to use, and overwhelming to follow.
Users expressed their dislike for the scrolling methods used to pick a time and date. They found that very unintuitive to scroll both horizontally and vertically.
6 out of 6 interviewees wanted a more reliable, quicker way to reserve a room.
User expressed that they couldn't edit the reservation leading them to make another reservation.
5 out of 6 interviewees wanted to be able to edit their reserve a room date and time.
They found it time consuming
Users mentioned having difficulties finding rooms in library after making reservation.
6 out of 6 interviewees wanted less time-consuming reservation.
Define
User Persona
Based on insights gained through usability testing and user interviews, I developed a persona to better understand the perspective of students reserving a room via the website portal.
How Might We framework
The library room reservation system required students to recall too much information from one part of the interface to another while reserving a study room. This is a problem because it made the room reservation process time-consuming, confusing, and error prone.
Based on the insights we received from our research, we formulated design questions to lead our brainstorming session. We wanted to know —
Ideate
Crazy 8 exercise
Following the consolidation of these research findings, we initiated a brainstorming phase to ideate potential features that could effectively tackle these concerns.
The basis for prioritizing each feature was determined by its potential to enhance the experience for students. So, we decided the new redesign should have these 3 main features:
Students will be given a step-by-step process not to make them feel overwhelmed or confused about the process.
To quickly edit their booking, students will have an area where they can edit their reservation if they need to correct a mistake.
Most students use the reservation website for group meetings, so sharing their booked rooms with colleagues will make the process easier.
Low-fi Wireframes
Conceptualizing the enhancing of the study room portal User Experience
After deciding on our main focuses for this design, we visualized low-fi wireframes by using Balsamiq to map out various interface layouts and interactions that aimed to address students' needs and pain points.
Testing
Hi-Fidelity Prototype Testing
Gathering user feedback
With the high-fidelity wireframes finalized, I crafted a prototype for user testing. We tested six students on the following flows:
Reserve a room
Reserve a room using the quick booking feature
Edit a room you booked.
Prioritizing feedback
Based on the feedback we received, we picked the main issues that were most prominent in the feedback given to us by our student participants.
They needed a fail-safe to return to if they made a mistake.
They were frustrated about being unable to take an extra step to view their booking.
Based the interaction with students we performed a system usability scale, we got a score of 74.0.
Iteration
PRIORITY REVISIONS
How we adapted to user feedback:
Impact
After a few months, the site launched in 2021 to the 29k students of IUPUI
All participants in the final prototype usability test agreed that it is easy to fix the error by adding the next and previous buttons.
Most participants mentioned that adding "new my bookings information" made getting quick information faster and easily accessible.
The final prototype scored a system usability Scale of 82.1 score with the students who tested out the final design.
Final Prototype
Introducing JagStudy
Click below to test it out yourself!
“ I really like this design that you all worked on and I don't think that I will be fighting the developer as much as you followed the guidelines I set. I'll be considering your teams research and overall project for the future redesign of the IUPUI Library reservation system.”
Gary R. Maixner III
User Experience Librarian and Liaison to Communication Studies at IUPUI Library
Reflections
This was the first project in which I led a group of designers. I realized that leading a group can be slightly different from being led. I managed tasks we had for the project and kept Gary updated on any deliverables we had. It was an exciting process, and I learned much about becoming a good leader from this project.
Next Steps
We explored how we could improve the reservation website, but I would love to explore how we can help navigate to the reservation room, as it was something that the students mentioned. Later in the future, we may venture into VR or AR to enhance that experience.