Glimpse of DePaul — Lauryn LuMarque

THE CHALLENGE

In my Prototyping I class, we were challenged to create an interface that would allow prospective students to learn about DePaul without physically visiting campus. However, my team came to an agreement that many online resources providing information on universities lacked the authentic preview of the college experience.

How could we provide that authenticity while offering the necessary information to prospective students through a digital format?

Throughout the process, we aimed to meet these goals:

Find out what prospective students look for in a school, and parlay that information into our final design

Discover what design decisions work and what doesn’t throughout the creation of our interface
Create something entertaining, yet informational

CREATING THE SOLUTION

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

A successful solution will

connect potential students to current students lives outside the classroom.

highlight the off-campus offerings that would be of interest.

allow for exploration and discovery of various cultural and social offerings on campus.

help emulate and preview the typical, genuine college experience.

With the aid of our research and design principles, we began brainstorming solutions and ideas, ultimately settling on Glimpse of DePaul.

I delivered the idea of Glimpse of DePaul because I believed that it would encapsulate the usefulness of interactivity with current DePaul students for information as well as allow prospective students to explore DePaul locations and features as they please unlike a guided tour that might not show the places they are interested in or are relevant to their own preferred college experience.

W I R E F R A M I N G

I created very rough paper prototypes to get a feel for the tasks our user would interact with. The user would be matched with a campus (Lincoln Park or Loop Campus) and be given the option on which locations/rooms they want to explore.

F E E D B A C K

Once gaining feedback from our peers and professor through usability testing, we took their critiques and suggestions to implement them thoughtfully into our digital prototype.

Panel #2 (Choose your interests)

Issue: Disconnect between the task and its purpose (Possible confusion for users)
Solution: Give more explanation to the task’s purpose

Panel #5 (Explore the room)

Issue: Not very engaging, lacked variety
Solution: Implement optional mini games into each new location, interact with various people other than the tour guide

THE PROTOTYPE

CHOOSE YOUR INTERESTS TO MATCH WITH A CAMPUS

Once a prospective student is matched with a campus, they are given information as well as optional overviews to look at to get a more in depth understanding of a building without cluttering the tour guide’s dialogue box.

Users can then choose between two places they want to explore, given the option to always go back for error prevention and maximal freedom in the interface.

INTERACT WITH REAL + CURRENT STUDENTS AT DEPAUL

Taking our research into account, I made sure to prioritize a popular resource that prospective students said they utilize and rely on a lot in their college search: current college students. Therefore, we wanted our interface to include real life students to guide the prospective student throughout each building. Each building is also equipped with mini games, so users are kept engaged while getting familiar with the building and tools available to students.

EXPLORE WHAT THE SURROUNDING LOCATION HAS TO OFFER

Stepping outside of campus grounds, I wanted to give prospective students the opportunity to see life outside of DePaul and how students here take advantage of the city of Chicago. Many may be unfamiliar with the city, especially out-of-state students who don’t have the ability to see Chicago before attending DePaul.

This gives a more expansive view that regular tours give that are offered on campus.

View the Video Walkthrough of Prototype

REFLECTION

User first, designer last.

During this project, we wanted to make sure the user was prioritized. Of course our design input was important, but we based those decisions based off of the feedback from users rather than the likes of ourselves. Detaching myself from the design to prioritize usability was an important step that allowed for me to grow into a more empathetic thinker.

Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

It is highly unlikely that you’ll nail the final design of an interface on the first prototype. That’s why iteration of prototypes are so important. You’re able to work off of your previous work to enhance it an improve it. This project showed me the importance as well as usefulness of iteration. It allowed me to see the bigger picture. become aware of the problems blind to my eye, and formulate a solution.