Redesign of the alumni site for Umeå University
UX DESIGN . COURSE PROJECT . PROJECT FOR UMEÅ UNIVERSITY
QUICK SUMMARY
The objective for this project was to evaluate the alumi services offered by Umeå University, and both rethink and redesign the alumi service, with a goal to increase the alumi usage of the service. Research on how other institutions use their alumis and interviews with current Umeå alumi, created “Alumeå”.t
CHALLENGE
Kvix, a live streaming platform for health and wellness noticed a lack of interactivity throughout the streamers on their platform, and wanted to increase the overall interactivity between their streamers and viewers, to help Kvix further grow and expand as a company. The challenge was to evaluate if Kvix’s proposed method of creating a mobile application would accomplish the goal as well as designing a proposed solution to the problem.
ROLE
This was a course project in a group, where I was responsible for conducting interviews with current alumi and proposing a plan of action for the project.
APPROACH
I focused on analysing what was said and implied during the interviews with alumi, to understand where current alumi where coming from and what they really wanted and constructed a plan of action to solve their biggest issues.
METHODS
Competitor analysis, interviews, persona, brainstorm, paperprototyping, wireframing,
INTERVIEWS
Overall consensus through the interviews where that the alumi felt that giving back and engagning as an alumi is important. But they also said that it either is difficult to engage with the current alumi system or they were completely unaware about how it worked, as they had been contacted by the University and not the other way around.
All interviewes mentioned that they had next to no experience with alumi during their own studies and was generally unaware about them. They felt like there definitely was a missed opportunity to invest something to alumis.
Analysis of the interviews led showed that while there are alumni who would like to give back, there is no real incentive to do so. Alumni want a clear way to give back but also be fairly compensated, be it some special treatment, genuine credit to guest lectures, job marketplace assistance or provided with a way to find available alumni in different job areas. Interesting note was that USA specifically was mentioned as a great example for handling alumni, which led to an examination of what the US does well.
PLAN OF ACTION
For the plan of action I suggested that we deviate sligthly from Umeå University’s graphical profile to bring forward that the alumi network, while still a clear part of Umeå University, would invite a sense of “ownness” among the alumni. Furthermore, I also suggested that we keep a compensation focus for the alumi to really incentivize interaction with the network.
RESEARCH TO DESIGN TRANSITION PHASE
From the research phase a Persona was made to define characteristics of a typical user, as well as a moodboard.
Persona
Moodboard
Flowchart (recreated in english)
RESEARCH TAKEAWAYS
Throughout the research it was found that a mobile applicaton would be a good idea to continue exploring. Conducting observations and interviews provided great insights about the current situation and the interactivity options available to streamers. With competitor research into what established businesses prioritize in their service, a few theories were confirmed in which interaction method were primarily utilized. With the results from the research in mind, a priority for functionality in the application were used when ideating on designs. Primarily, snapshot was decided to be the on of the main features to bring forward, followed by the stream chat as well as providing the streamer with additional features to streamline their stream timeline. In short, general guidelines to have in mind were: No, or minimal navigation required, application should follow the stream timeline (before, during & after), snapshot should be a main focus and lastly the chat needs to be available in some capacity.
PAPER PROTOTYPE
A paper prototype was created to explore layout and flow as well as test with potential users. It provided vital information and context to how the final design was established.
VISUAL DESIGN
REFLECTION
How did the users respond?
Overall assessment was very positive and the proposed design captured many existing issues while providing a good incentive for Alumni to utilize the service.
Rewards system was very interesting and has a lot of potential for diverse rewards.
What’s next?
In a later update, I would like to use the feedback from the stakeholder presentation to improve the application further. Additionally, refining the clarity of the design language across the application. Further testing of the design with current alumni.
What was learned?
Many things could be taken from this project, such as the time and effort required to get users for tests, as well as using internal tests to get preliminary results. Doing as many itterations of ideas as possible to explore most of the options avaiable to reach a thought out design. Working in a project group and the scheduling required to have everyone be on the same page as well as doing the work that need to be done.
What would you have done differently?
I would have taken contact with the users a lot earlier to possibly get even more user tests done. Dedicate even more time for ideation and brainstorming to explore even more and possibly find more and different approaches to the challenge, as well as putting further effort into the team to make the delivery smoother with greater results.