Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) campus tours are meant to give visitors a brief look into the campus culture and what a student's life looks like. In this project, I was tasked to envision a campus tour ten years into the future where HoloLens, a headset meant to augment reality, has become ubiquitous. The current tour gave visitors a general sense of what CMU has to offer, but I realize does not go into immense detail with any one stop as there are many places a tour guide needs to hit in less than an hour.
MY ROLE: I helped create territory maps and stakeholders, created the interviews, and created the images for the final redesign proposol.
| Group | Vicky Zhou (designer) | Samantha Wong (engineer) |
| Duration | Fall; 2 weeks | |
| Medium | Video prototype | |
| Tools | Prototyping, AfterEffects, Personas |
Campus spaces can often not be used for what they were created for. Many spaces on Carnegie Mellon University's campus are used inefficiently, and our team was interested in how these spaces are currently being used and how we could improve them.
With the time frame of two months, I worked with two other people to do three rounds of user research and took our findings to create a redesign to this problem space.
Our final deliverable consisted of a 17" x 22" poster that conveys the summary of our research findings and our proposed redesign.
Our team did preliminary stakeholder and territory maps in order to frame our question, then began collecting data through various methods: (1) online survey, (b) interactive posters, (c) in-depth interviews.
In order to gain a general picture of our problem space, we created a territory map, listing out what we already knew about the issue, and connecting them to certain categories so that we could be able to see our issue at a larger scale.
Using Google Forms and the student ran Facebook Carnegie Mellon University Class of 2019/2021/2022 pages, we were able to mass send our surveys to 50 people, constituting an adequate amount of responses for our first stage.
In this survey, we asked mainly general questions about what people liked/disliked in order to get an idea of their thoughts and to confirm our own.
After gaining a general sense of the pros and cons of the space, we went into further detail with interactive posters on table tops. By using more engaging surveys on table tops, we were able to guarantee that the responses were by people who used the space. Compared with the online surveys, we received less of quantifiable data and more of qualitative ones.
Finally, we conducted on site interviews during a weekday in order to gain the greatest depth of information. We thought by going during this time we could get the most representative data of the people who used the space. We asked the participants for what they used the space for, what they enjoy and dislike, what they would with they could improve. The feedback given from this data collection was enough to set up in our redesign.
Our data collection allowed us to discover certain inefficencies and dislikes about the space, but also what the campus space does well. In summary:
Issues/Concerns: Not enough seating, noise levels, and insufficient power outlets
Most common activities: eating and working
Preferences towards ourskirts of Rohr Commons area and towards lower tables
Generally willing to share a table with a stranger, but would not go out of their way
From our user research, we wanted to focus on creating more sufficient seating area. As a result, we took advantage of the pre-existing physical surfaces in the area to allow for increased seating number. In addition, because of our discovery of people's willing to sit with strangers, we created a bar table, where people can sit in close proximity but still have their own personal space.
