GOOGLE DESIGN CHALLENGE 2020 (Shortlisted)
RADHIKA RAVINDRAN
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Introduction to the Design Challenge
“Your school wants to strengthen the community by encouraging experienced students to connect with new students and help them adjust to campus life. Design an experience that allows mentors and mentees to discover each other. Consider the needs of both mentors and mentees, including how someone may become a mentor and how to connect mentors to mentees.”
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With only 7 days to go, the Design Sprint methodology fit perfectly as a process
Phase I:
Understand
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Re-reading the design prompt
Your school wants to strengthen the community by encouraging experienced students to connect with new students and help them adjust to campus life.
Design an experience that allows mentors and mentees to discover each other.
Consider the needs of both mentors and mentees, including how someone may become a mentor and how to connect mentors to mentees.
The Actionable Parts have been highlighted in blue in this re-reading of the Google design prompt 2020
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Applying how might we to the actionable parts of the prompt helped me to come up with questions that would drive my research through surveys and interviews.
Case 1: (Mentees discover mentors)
Case2: (Mentors discover mentees)
The questions I faced could be answered through a combination of methods:
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Doing online research to understand the mentorship programs in my University, I realised...
International Peer Mentoring Program (IPMP): The IUPUI Office of International Affairs (OIA) has up-to-date set of students who are welcome and support new International students. The bio, subject and interests are clearly mentioned. But there is no contact information or mentoring scheduling link provided for the mentors. A student has to access the names, search in the University directory in his/ her own mailbox in order to mail the mentor.
21st Century Scholars Mentoring: This is available for every undergraduate students as per their request. The contact information provided is for mentors to enroll into the program. The qualifying information [such as the Mentor should have been a Mentee in the same program before], requisists etc are missing from the website. The only link is a PDF application that can be downloaded and filled in order to enroll as a mentor.
Orientation Team Mentoring: The Oteam is present during Orientation for mentors to connect with mentees. The OTEAM is an undergraduate student leadership group dedicated to engaging new students and families as they attend orientation and begin classes at IUPUI.The OTeam is a big team and has a lot of responsibilities. The information of what help to expect from the OTeam has not been clearly mentioned in the website.
Mandatory for all freshman
Optional
Optional: Mentees to be International Students
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Diversity Enrichment and Achievement Program (DEAP): DEAP peer mentors are the liaison between the opportunities and grand experiences available at IUPUI and our incoming freshman class. The bio, subject and interests are clearly mentioned. But there is no contact information or mentoring scheduling link provided for the mentors. Also, the background of the mentors is unknown which makes it tough for the mentees to choose the right mentor.
IUPUI Honors College Peer Mentoring: This is the most informative page of mentoring found in terms of mentoring in the campus. The success stories section shows how well a mentee gre into a mentor and later on succeeded in his/ her research with the experience gained. This also makes it easier for mentees to find the best suitable mentor.
IU 365: Mentors are present and there are 2 options of - request friend and book a meeting which majority of the students are unaware of and do not use.The application has several options such as scheduling, maps, speakers, resources, activity feed and several others. Users are overwhelmed by the amount of information overload.
Optional
Optional
IU Mobile Application
...That there are numerous mentorship programs working independently of each other, some Optional and others mandatory
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Offline research to understand how the users get to know about the mentorship programs in the campus
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Estimating the scale of the problem (context of my University): IUPUI
30,000 Students
1 Student Mentoring Department +
317 other Departments
30+ Dedicated mentorship Programs +
50+ Departmental mentoring Programs
4000+ Students mentored every year
25000+ Students?
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COMPANY | DISCOVERY | SMART MATCHING | ENGAGEMENT (Platform Driven) | MEASURING SUCCESS (Platform Driven) | ACTIVITIES TO DO TOGETHER | RESOURCE PLATFORM | NOTES |
| YES | YES | NO | NO | NO | YES | The mentees and mentors are matched with smart algorithm and it is upto both the parties to take the mentoring further. |
| YES | YES | YES | NO | YES | NO | The mentoring is for professional circles/ paid group mentoring.The engagement matrix is something that the mentors and mentees can access which gives insights to what can be improved. |
| YES | NO | NO | NO | NO | YES | There are several mentoring programs which are known/ unknown for new students. The mentor cannot be contacted directly through a platform, also it isn’t clear how engagement is ensured in a mentoring program. |
| YES | NO | NO | NO | NO | YES | The resources are well sought and receives 1000s of view. THe platform also drives connections and on-one mentoring/ connections between mentors and mentees. But the overall aspect of an organized way of discovering, mentoring and measuring engagement and success is missing. |
What can we learn from platforms in the same opportunity areas?
Career Advice
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What can we learn from application from different opportunity areas?
Skillshare is an online platform where creators can teach classes about their skills or areas of expertise, and users can sign up to be a part of the the classes, or discussions or even attend one time workshops. Everyone can explore all the courses they can but will receive updates only when they choose to officially join a group/class. This app focuses on
Meetup is another platform for organising meetings for groups based on common interests and geographical proximity. There is a calendar option, a messages feature and also notifications and discussions about a specific event. Events can be organised by users having a premium account and can be recurring or one time. The Focus of this app is on
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Surveying Online (54) current students’ mentorship experiences
Mentors (32)
Mentees (22)
72%
had 2-5 mentors
at any given time
67%
preferred to meet
their mentor in person
6 out of 10
want to be mentors to
new students later
How did you bond with your mentor?
73%
had a mentor when they were new students
54%
Preferred to have 2-5 Mentees at any given time
4 out of 5
Had a friend/classmate who was also a mentor to someone
How often do you meet / communicate with your mentee?
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Listening and engaging with users through user interviews
9 users and stakeholders:
5 mentors
3 mentees
2 mentorship coordinators
Through a series of 9 user interviews(4 mentors, 3 mentees and 2 mentorship coordinators), I could identify the problems faced by the various stakeholders. I used the insights from these interviews to create a story with steps that enabled me to translate my findings into organized insightful journey maps- both for mentees and mentors in the second stage.
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What do the users do and have to say?
‘We have about 15 mentors mentoring about 100-120 students each every year. We divide them randomly on a piece of paper. Sometimes we have to rearrange the names of mentees to match with a mentor if there are any clashes afterward.’
-Senior Academic Advisor, Student Support Services
At the end of the day, there are several problems both academic and outside which your professor can’t really answer, and I always approached John(mentor) who helped me no matter the time or what the doubt was.
-Mentee, MS-Data Science
There are several mentees whom I have met and talked to, but there are some with whom I became really close and that's what I would say that it’s like a funnel. This could happen because of personality, common interests and honesty in regards to identifying and commenting on each other’s works.
-Mentor, Former Intern, Google
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Making sense of interview research data as a story: Meet Jason, a mentee
How do I get the ID card? Hmm College is confusing! Wish I could reach out to someone for help?
Mentorship programs, huh? How do I attend this? Who is the mentor? Is it a student or a faculty member?
Hmm, she looks like she’s mentoring some people from my class. How do I approach her? Maybe they’re friends already. I feel I might intrude
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Hey, I am doing a mentoring program this year. But the director chooses the students and their mentors in the program.
Hi, I am Jason, freshman, HCI Department. Are you a mentor?
No worries, may be add a priority option to the reminders, it might help.
Hi, Sorry that I am 15 minutes late. The reminder you mailed was lost in my inbox!
Why isn’t my mentor responding? I am really in need of help. Wish I had someone else I could contact...
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But I feel comfortable with you, I’d rather have you as my mentor
Well that is how the system works. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll find a good mentor
In about 80% of the cases*, Jason gets matched with a random mentor through the system. They don’t hit off, and the experience remains unsatisfactory throughout the program.
* From data gathered from surveys, and from directly interviewing past and current mentees from IUPUI mentorship programs
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New students
this year seem promising! Lets see whom the director put in my mentoring list!
I feel like sharing my learning with others. I need to give back what I have learned from my mentors to people who need it. But am I experienced enough?
Wonder how I can find the right mentee for me, someone who I can build a real connection
with.
Hey, you guys!
You should consider joining the campus mentorship program. I’m in it too as mentor - maybe we’ll get matched!
Making sense of interview research data as a story: Meet Amy, a mentor
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But I waited for too long!
Amy, sorry for the late reply. I won’t be able to come today.
Oh Come on! No response.
What about the tasks I have given them?
2 weeks later
Should I request the director to give me other students? Guess it might be the same experience.
In about 60% of the cases*, Amy gets matched with a random mentee through the system. They don’t hit off, the mentee might be uninterested and the experience remains unsatisfactory throughout the program.
* From data gathered from surveys, and from directly interviewing past and current mentees from IUPUI mentorship programs
Phase 2:
Define
Experience journey mapping
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Explore people signing up for events, finding Peer mentoring programs
Try to talk, email or find mutual connections between potential mentors and themselves
DISCOVER
CONNECT
ENGAGE
FOLLOW UP
Schedule Meetings, Discuss doubts, Finish tasks and implement advice
Build a network for themselves along with the mentor’s, ask and give recommendations
ACTIONS
Needs someone they can trust to guide them and advise them about classes, skills and more
Needs to understand who is the right mentor for them academically, personality and interests-wise
Needs a mentor who engages with them, is responsive and takes the mentorship seriously
Build a professional connection, share networks and information with others
NEEDS &
WANTS
Nervous, Shy, Uncertain and Curious
Overwhelmed, Excited, Expectant
Trust, Belonging and confidence. (Frustration if mentor is unresponsive or disinterested)
Sense of community, responsibility to give back, empathy for new students looking for a mentor
EMOTIONS &
THOUGHTS
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Help with discovering mentors, help with communication and since solution is digital, no more shy!
Provide availability of mentors and their skill sets/areas of expertise. Talk and find ex-mentees too
Support and communication with other mentees, able to meet with mentor, and track tasks assigned
Consider being a mentor, recommend users to a mentor and build lasting connections
OPPORTUNITY
With help from interview data and surveys, I identified pain points and opportunities through experience mapping for a Mentee
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Want to give back to the community, help new students as they were helped by mentors
Sign up for Mentorship programs, and wait for people to approach them first
MOTIVATED/ DISCOVER
ANNOUNCE AND CONNECT
ENGAGE
FOLLOW UP
Actively mentor new students, advise them and give them tasks towards their goals and ambitions
Make mentees part of network, use them as resources and advisors to other new mentees
Want to help new students, at the same time, build confidence,, network and polish communication
Needs to find students who need mentoring and are responsible, committed and serious about it
Make scheduling and meeting the mentees easy, also a form of communication between mentees
Need a system to stay in touch, look at previous mentorship experiences and learn
Excitement, Empathizing with new students
Expectant, Curious, doubtful about competence as a mentor
Overwhelmed, Frustrated, cant keep track of all mentees’ assigned works
Friendship, Trust and being an active part in a community they have helped
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Provide a platform where people can find someone experienced willing to help them
Help find mentees with similar interests and reach out, and make yourself visible to them
Track works assigned to individual mentees, have them talk to each other and schedule via a system
Have an archival space for previous mentorship and a repository of resources for use in new ones
ACTIONS
NEEDS &
WANTS
EMOTIONS &
THOUGHTS
OPPORTUNITY
With help from interview data and surveys, I identified pain points and opportunities through experience mapping for a Mentor
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Pain Points and Opportunities identified from User Research
Students need to know more
about the mentorship programs at the campus because currently, there is an information gap that hinders 1000s of students to enroll into the mentorship program that they prefer to.
Users need less than 5 mentees/Mentors because more than that number is not pragmatic for a students’ time
Mentors and Mentees both prefer to meet in person because tasks happen faster and most of the activities are group activities
Extracurriculars on campus need to be promoted along with academics because they are the strongest points for bond-formation between mentees and mentors
Mentors and mentees need to discover and match with each other because system assigned mentor-mentees are not usually successful.
Most mentees want to become mentors later on in their college life because they have want to give back to the community.
Mentees and Mentors need to have a set schedule of their meeting because a successful mentorship program has an organised procedure.
Mentorship needs to have follow up meetings and task completion because orientation is not an ideal kick off point for mentor-mentorship bonding.
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Solutions have to be presented in a format that aligns with the users - For this reason, I did a short How might we activity with the pain points and opportunities and conducted an online survey with 11 students about their choice of preferred solutions.
I refined the results of the survey and came up with the following factors that an ideal solution would have:
What kind of a experience do potential users prefer?
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Introducing Augmentor!
I chose to make the experience a mobile app for portability and accessibility. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I ideated about what makes a platform accessible, scalable and adaptable.
Embedding Augmentor into the Google family of apps allows it to share its features with other apps, integrate with University G-Suite and bring value to the whole google ecosystem.
Google Augmentor
Google Calendar
Google Gmail
Google Drive
Google Forms
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Identifying & reassuring Augmentor’s purpose through user Personas
Mentor
Mentee
I would like to polish my communication skills and build my network
Amy, Senior
Jason, Freshman
Shy, Focused and Caring
Outgoing, Hardworking and determined
GOALS: |
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FRUSTRATIONS: |
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INTERESTS: | Jazz music, Cooking, Contemporary Art, Dance |
GOALS: |
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FRUSTRATIONS: |
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INTERESTS: | Hiking, Contemporary Art, Dance, Baseball |
College is intimidating! Wish I had someone I trust to guide me through
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Revisiting the prompt: Crafting an informed problem statement
All students across Indiana University need a platform that centralizes mentorship as a fun, rewarding and community-building activity for both mentors and mentees because while the University has mentorship programs, their inclusion, accessibility and popularity is limited.
Phase 3:
Sketch
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Co - Creation Workshop with users!
The quickest way to generate ideas is to share them and bounce them off multiple minds. Inspired by the crazy 8 method, I organised a short co-creation workshop in my University library with students who were the potential users for the Augmentor app.
There were 5 participants and we followed this structure to create, assess and vote on ideas within a timespan of 40 minutes.
Introduction to the prompt
Evolution of the problem statement
Research findings & design directives
Everyone shares their ideas and sketches
Everyone votes (5 votes each) on their favorite ideas
New, fresh and diverse ideas!
Everyone Sketches 6 Ideas in 6 Minutes
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Co - Creation Workshop with users!
The users were asked to sketch 6 ideas and present their ideas to the rest of the group. The best 3 ideas were voted out using 5 votes each.
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Initial Sketches by the users & takeaways from the workshop
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One great idea was to have a tinder-style swipe motion for cards that represented common interests between mentors and mentees so that they could find each other. Another was to allow mentees to turn into mentors after their first year, yet another popular ideas was that of discussion panels and calendar driven appointments
Initial Sketches by the users & takeaways from the workshop
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Initial wireframe sketches and user flows
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Iterations on the sketches and user flows
Phase 4:
Decide
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Fine tuning my process through Expert Reviews
For my expert review, I spoke to two UX designers who have worked at Google.
After explaining my prompt, research, and low fidelity design screens and flow, they had the following comments on my work -
It is really good that you are following a process and keeping accessibility right from the start of your research. Make the process engaging to read.
Kartik Rao
UX Designer, Youtube
Make more iterations, focus on the high level than a single solution.
Evi Odioko
UX Design Intern, Google, 2019
After discussing with the experts and taking feedback, I implemented those suggestions that resonated with the prompt, the design vision and the overall lucidity of the design and the presentation.
Revisiting the task flow of a mentee to organise Information Architecture
Every Mentorship Program has an informat facet which connects both mentors and mentees and helps build trust and bonding which is necessary for long term mentoring. Through the app, I would like to promote this more than anything.
Connect
Mentorship 2
Mentorship 3
Mentorship 1
Engage
Follow-up
Discover
Formal
Informal
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Detailed User Flow (of a mentee)
DISCOVER
CONNECT
ENGAGE
FOLLOW
UP
Only hamburger menu:
Reachability could be tougher. But needed to arrange the information neatly.
That is why the enrolled courses are displayed in the discover page as well for easy access and visibility.
Rearranging the flow for optimum accessible information layout
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What does it mean to Integrate into the G-Suite of apps?
Studying the Google family of apps that students use often and understanding the consistent UI (Visual vocabulary and common elements) between them - Google Drive, Google Gmail, Google Tasks, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Photos were some of them.
All of Google apps are scalable and accessible to users and communities all over the world. This means access over language barriers, disabilities and more.
Google Apps borrow and share information and features between each other. This means using gmail for communication, calendar for appointments, contacts for better integration and more!
Phase 5:
Prototype
All the screens are created from the mentee mode of the app’s user flow unless specified.
Low Fidelity Prototype:
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Low Fidelity Prototype Sign-In
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Low Fidelity Prototype Interest-swipe
Contemporary Art
This is an optional stage and can be accessed anytime from one’s profile to modify their interests.
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Low Fidelity Prototype Discover
The discover page is the main portal to all the mentorship opportunities at Indiana University.
There are categories on top such as articles, mentorship events etc. that can be discovered and planned directly from the discover screen.
Updates of the mentorship groups that you are part of are displayed in the first screen.
Next up are teams that you follow, wanted to enroll but got waitlisted into and the ones that fit your interests. Based on your profile, current / past commitments and interests-swipe, machine learning can work to show you opportunities that are most likely to interest you. The future opportunities for a mentee to become mentor are displayed further.
Teams with your interests
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Low Fidelity Prototype Navigation
Mentorship teams are separated from each other with separated task list and commenting pages due to the diversity in subjects each team has to deal with.
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Low Fidelity Prototype Navigation (When a mentee becomes a mentor)
Freshman: Mentee Profile
Sophomore: ‘Become a Mentor’ appears depending on the reviews on the past commitments.
Sophomore: Became a Mentor
The mentor badge appears.
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Low Fidelity Prototype Mentorship Team Feed
Bottom navigation bar appears to connect the main pieces of core functionality available with one tap, allowing rapid switching between feed, tasks and people.
Sharing and helping has always been the foundation of mentorship, the share option in the feed allows the mentors or the mentees of the team to post their views and relevant resources for the rest of the team.
The information icon takes you to an About-page detailed with the mentorship course, curriculum, about the mentor, schedule, previous reviews, location etc.
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Low Fidelity Prototype Mentorship Team Feed
Collapse
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Low Fidelity Prototype Mentorship Team Tasks
Completed tasks are not deleted from the account, but kept for future reference. Also, the amount of completed tasks as a team can provide a sense of satisfaction to the team members.
Mentorship Group 1
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Low Fidelity Prototype Mentorship Team Tasks (Adding Group comment)
Group discussions specific to each task is provided in order to foster and grow the sense of community. Having group comments also encourages the members to help each other out more frequently as the queries are not private.
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Low Fidelity Prototype Mentorship Team Tasks (Adding Private comment)
My research showed two facets of mentoring: Creating a community and one-to-one connection. Through Google Augmentor, I wanted to strengthen both the relationships for the mentors and mentees to have a complete experience of mentoring.
Private comments are only visible to the mentee and the mentor.
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Low Fidelity Prototype Mentorship Team People Page
People tab includes all the members of the team.
Members, details, their email ID for contact are available at this page. I did not want this to end up as being another chat application, so I made the messaging option an email based platform that connects with gmail. This would eliminate most of the short and quick messages and focuses on thought out and longer emails.
Overall
Wireflow
Phase 6:
Validate
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Getting most out of agile usability testing with real users
According to Jakob Nielsen, usability results hardly differ when conducted with more than 5 users than when conducted with 5 users. For this reason, I user tested the prototype with 5 users. A combination of the following tasks were used as part of the usability test to give a holistic view.
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TASK | User #1 | User #2 | User #3 | User #4 | User #5 |
Sign Up and access the Discover Page | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
Navigate to a mentorship group in 2 ways | PASS | PASS | confused | PASS | PASS |
Go to a task and add a group comment | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | confused |
Find the private comment | PASS | PASS | PASS | confused | PASS |
Find your mentor and mail the mentor | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
NOTES | Wanted filters to search for mentorship groups in the discover page | N/A | Searched for the mentorship group in the search bar and was confused for 30 seconds if that was what was expected as the second way of navigation. | Had the impression that the detailed-task page was only for public comments. | The user tried to access the task via the hamburger menu and later realized to access the mentorship page. |
What were users able to do successfully?
What were users saying through the walkthroughs?
“What is the difference between private and group comments? Is group comment within a group that makes it private?”
-User #1
“I like the fact that the tasks are directly fed into the Google calendar and we can access the mail from the people-page”
-User #2
“The app feels very familiar, I feel the novelty at the same time the organisation of options are intuitive.”
-User #5
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nearly average novelty score since I aimed to create a familiar experience with augmentor being a Google Family Product
Since the product was in low fidelity, I expected a dip in stimulation & attractiveness, but the overall score came out more than I expected.
High perspicuity shows that people understood the product effortlessly.
What were users saying through the walkthroughs?
Mean System Usability Score
92.0
out of 100
The System Usability Survey (SUS) received an excellent score. Most of the users mentioned the reduction of the scores are due to the less contrast in the low fidelity. But every user who participated in the user testing gave the application a perfect score on familiarity.
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Designing for accessibility to everyone
Accessibility isn’t so much about designing for disability as it is about designing for everyone.
In this case, it not only includes people with visual impairments but also users with linguistic barriers as they make their way as new international students into Universities.
With the color scheme and the font sizes, the design has a contrast rating of 8.19:1 and a rating of AAA for both normal and large text.
32-38% of new students are non native speakers of English. As a non native English speaker, I understand the role of language in making users feel comfortable, trusting and welcome by our designs.
The final design
DISCOVER
TEAM FEED
TEAM FEED
(Information collapsed)
TEAM TASKS
PRIVATE COMMENT
(Taskwise)
GROUP COMMENT
(Taskwise)
TEAM MEMBERS
NOTIFICATIONS
STUDENT PROFILE
Freshman Student (Mentee)
STUDENT PROFILE
Sophomore Student
(Mentee turning mentor)
MAIN DRAWER
Freshman Student (Mentee)
MAIN DRAWER
Sophomore Student
(Mentee turning mentor)
ARCHIVED GROUPS
Freshman Student (Mentee)
ARCHIVED GROUPS
Sophomore Student
(Mentee groups, Mentor groups)
I believe no detail is too small. A logo is the face of an app and I love for it to have meaning. Here is my thinking behind designing this logo and its meaning -
Designing of the logo
Challenges
Reflections
If I had more time
Learnings & thoughts
Thank you for reading!
RADHIKA RAVINDRAN
GOOGLE UX DESIGN CHALLENGE 2020
Google Augmentor