StudyBuddies

A mobile app helping students form study groups in large classes

Quick Facts

Role: UX Designer

Tools: InVision, MoqUps

Timeline: March 2017 - June 2017

Goal: Create a convenient and easy to use mobile app for students to form study groups within large classes.

Process

In my Intro to Informatics class, we were tasked with creating a prototype to solve a problem that we decide on as a team. My team chose to address the needs of first year university students looking to form study groups in their classes.

User Research

My team conducted user research through the use of an online survey and user interviews. We received 50 respondents on the survey and we interviewed 10 different people including students, teaching assistants, and professors. From our research we were able to conclude that users valued collaborative studying and the main issues our users faced when trying to form study groups with their peers were time and location conflicts. We found that respondents wanted a dedicated platform solely focused on forming study groups. Keeping this in mind, we wanted to create an app that allowed users to conveniently find people who had similar schedules to study with.

User Interface Design

While my teammates and I shared the work load of the user research and reports, I created the user interface designs and worked with my team’s critiques to bring about the final prototype. I wanted to create an app that was easy to use and intuitive.

Outcome

Our final product was an interactive high fidelity mobile application. This project was the first time that I have applied the user centered design process to create a product with a team. I had a lot of challenges figuring out how to create intuitive interface designs and navigating the tools used to create the interfaces. Through these challenges, I was able to gain more experiences using different types of prototyping tools. This project also provided me with a lot of insight on the importance of seeking feedback and taking the time to fully understand our users and needs before designing.