USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Project Summary: For this project, I was part of the design team tasked with exploring how to design for a digital showcase. Together, we conducted research, shared our findings and created prototypes and possible solutions for the problem.
Consumer Profile: Current and former Santa Monica College students
Roles: Researcher, Designer, Project Manager
Design tools used: Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Miro
Defining the Challenge
The project begins with understanding the challenge. We crafted our How Might We statement in order to narrow our focus on a problem and solve for it. In this case, we wanted to see how we could help current students submit their work to participate in a school-wide showcase of student work.
Next, we began gather enough useful data to begin brainstorming some solutions. These were our research methods in order to get that valuable data that did not exist.
Our initial observations came from competitors and looking at how other colleges currently conduct a digital showcases and observed some best practices by looking at existing materials for inspiration.. I also just started to think about what this phrase meant to me: Digital Showcase.
We began by outlining our journey and going through each research method.
Interviews
After developing an idea of what we thought a digital showcase meant, we conducted interviews with current SMC students to get their thoughts.
We developed an interview guide before we conducted our interviews so that we asked several students about their thoughts and wishes about what a digital showcase meant for them.
After our interviews, we reflected on what we gathered from our subjects and started to understand our audience a bit better. We also started to see patterns about what students wanted. Our user persona started to take shape and we came up with Jenny.
The insights gained during this research phase showed us that students wanted to submit their work into a showcase and feel empowered to participate.
It was finally become to be a little clearer once we understood what students wanted and what they needed to succeed. The customer journey map helped us put our research, insights and ideas into a plan that helped us visualize our solution; creating an online showcase, providing assistance, and encouraging students to participate.
Concept Development & Prototype
Further research into our newly found topic led us to study art and design institutions to learn how they attract talented individuals to submit their work.
This prototype was designed with an SMC student interested in submitting their work in mind. It was important to have these items in our solution.
Clear to understand
Information is formatted like other SMC pages and displays clear submission information.
Resources & Checklist
A notification reminds users to review the resources available and check out the checklist before submitting.
Easy to use
Drag and drop multiple files allows the user to submit all of their content at once.
Click this image to try out the prototype to submit your work on the SMC website.
Results and Feedback
We presented our findings and prototypes to the key stakeholders for this project which included SMC faculty. Impressed by how we kept students in mind, we received some questions that could help us refine our solution and tailor it to be something that can be implemented by the school
Final Thoughts
After this project concluded, we walked away with a better understanding of how to respond to students' needs and wants. Ultimately, getting students to participate will be easier if the infrastructure to hold and showcase student work is in place. Our solution highlights how to inform the students about this new initiative, and how that work could be displayed on the website for all to appreciate and be proud of the work being done at Santa Monica College.