Northeastern University Space Assistance
A Northeastern University Space Scheduling Online intervention.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Background: A group project from the course: Design Context, Process, and Systems.
Role: Design thinking, style setting, and prototyping.
Objective: Improve an existing Northeastern experience.
Timespan: Spring 2019; 4 weeks.
Audience: Northeastern students.
Goal: Re-shape the existing digital space reserving experience on the online portal NUSSO.
THE PROBLEM
As Northeastern students, we find it difficult to reserve space. Let me break it down for you: As of 2019, Northeastern University has a total enrollment of about 20,000 students, and the Boston campus is 73 acres. However, some students are on co-op, studying abroad, or located at other campuses and not all 73 acres are open for reservations, so I roughly estimate there's more than 10,000 students sharing 600,000 square feet of space. Now, imagine half of the students, or even quarter, trying to find a place on campus to study, host club meetings, or discuss group projects. Chaos.
Yes, we have Northeastern University Space Scheduling Online that does the minimal job of allowing space reservations for a short period of time, but it's confusing to navigate and unhelpful during peak traffic times.
I've never logged in successfully due to some unresolved technological issues, but according teammates, the inconvenience is specifically caused by the online system's unfriendly user flow and lack of real-time feedback of space usage.
Identified problems of NUSSO.
THE SOLUTION
Introducing: NUSA - Northeastern University Space Assistant!
Instead of continuing the current web format, which is accessed through the student portal, we designed an app dedicated for space reservation, minimizing the clicks it takes to complete the desired action, be it to reserve a space or view a place's current busyness.
Instead of continuing the current web format, which is accessed through the student portal, we designed an app dedicated for space reservation, minimizing the clicks it takes to complete the desired action, be it to reserve a space or view a place's current busyness.
Initial sketches of application.
Our application centers the witty "space" theme, including the name (small tribute to NASA), logo, navigation button (we're going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship), and more. This is the result of discussions and iterations over the affordance of visual cues, the hierarchy of information architecture, and the consistency of component styles.
The becoming of our cosmos.
THE OUTCOME
NUSA is an upgraded NUSSO. It not only improved the digital navigating experience, but also enhanced our campus life. It allows us to reserve spaces more efficiently and view live updates of space busyness to avoid an extra trip just to find out it's too crowded. We even thought about a theoretically practical solution on collecting live data. Since virtually all students connect to NUwave, the campus Wi-Fi, we can use information from the WiFi routers about where they connected from, in addition to location data from their phones.
NUSA is an upgraded NUSSO. It not only improved the digital navigating experience, but also enhanced our campus life. It allows us to reserve spaces more efficiently and view live updates of space busyness to avoid an extra trip just to find out it's too crowded. We even thought about a theoretically practical solution on collecting live data. Since virtually all students connect to NUwave, the campus Wi-Fi, we can use information from the WiFi routers about where they connected from, in addition to location data from their phones.
The Prototype
The screens were created on Adobe Illustrator and prototyped in InVision.
Questions, comments, or suggestions? Leave a comment or message me! I would love to hear your what you think and discuss them with you. I promise I don't bite.
