INVOLVED
St. John's University encourages student engagement on campus through joining organizations and attending events on their Queens campus.
Undergraduate students experience motivation to join organizations and gain leadership experience, but feel frustrated with the lack of accessibility to an updated platform that promotes both organizations and events on campus.
Project Details
Personal Project | Student Government Inc & Residence Life
Project Skills
UX Research, Storyboarding, Survey Creation, Interviewing, User Persona & Journey
Research Methods
Competitive Analysis
To identify opportunities, I conducted a competitive analysis of how other universities effectively (private to large research universities) promote student organizations and events on their campuses to their undergraduate students.
In-Person Interviews
Using an interview guide to I discovered how students interact with organizations and events on campus, their communication style and level of accessibility, I met with the following groups:
Undergraduate students | 5 various colleges
Student government Inc. | 2 e-board members
Residence life | 3 resident assistants
Survey
To discover the general culture of student involvement and interests in campus organizations and events, I created a 10 question survey for students to fill out.
Key Insights About Students
Students prefer one centralized application to find organizations and stay up-to-date with events on campus.
Organizations prefer a platform that allows them to keep students updated while maintaining the organization's "personality"
Organizations prefer a platform where their social media accounts can be linked to the application.
Most students involved in an organization found out about the organization through word of mouth and social media (i.e., Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat)
Most students not involved in an organization blame not being able to find updated information about the organizations on campus
User Journey
Based off of the information gathered from students I interviewed, I created 2 user journeys that represent the current experience student’s have when looking for something to do on campus. Specifically, JR The Junior and Faye The Freshman are wanting to go to an event for motives of their own, but their outcome results in similar emotions.
JR The Junior
Faye The Freshman
Storyboarding & Narrative
I explored various ways an application would improve student experiences while navigating organizations to join and staying up-to-date with organization events. I focused on specific features mentioned by students during in-person interviews:
Central hub for all organization information
Allow organization's personality to shine through
Link existing organization social media accounts to application
Allow students to follow and add organizations to their personal timeline
UX Solution
I conceptualized INVOLVED, an application that will integrate all organizations on campus and their events in one. INVOLVED will allow organizations to create a profile, connect their Instagram and Twitter accounts, and allow the option of sending automatic calendar invites to students that are subscribed to their profile. Organizations profiles will include a summary of the organization, e-board members, photos of past events, and a calendar of events planned. Students will be able to quickly create an account, (name, email, and interests) and will be greeted with overarching categories of organizations on campus. Students can click a category, scroll through organizations, and check out their profiles or use the search bar to filter out organizations for quicker results. Students will have the options to subscribe to organizations to always stay up-to-date and know what is happening on campus.
Student Profile
Students will be requested to enter the following:
First and last name
Student email address (verification)
Keywords about their personal interests (i.e., academic & pharmacy or culture & hispanic)
Organization Profile
Organizations will be requested to enter the following:
Name of organization
Names of students on the e-board
Link Twitter and Instagram social media accounts
Select whether or not to send automatic calendar invites to students subscribed to their profile
Date, time, and location of their general body meetings.
