UDawgs

Now, you don’t need to download 4 apps to connect with your peers. Network with peers who share similar interests and compatible skills to make connections and find projects or teammates on campus.

Role

I worked as a UX Designer and Researcher with a team of 5 in a student led club.

Duration

8 months (Sep 2021 - May 2022)

Overview

UDawgs is an academic year-long project for a UW club for Design for America. The premise of the club is to design resilient and practical solutions to improve the local communities’ quality of life, focusing on hands-on project that allow members to practice design and solve real world problems. My team chose to tackle the problem of networking and socializing on campus, aiming to support students who have similar interests and compatible skills to make connections and find projects/teammates on campus.

Team

Team Wizards in Design for America — Penny Yeh, Cassandra Liu, Haipei Chen, Sean Yoon

Tools

Figma, FigJam

Scope

UI/UX Design, Visual Design, Wireframing, Rapid Prototyping, Competitor Analysis

The Problem

We all know that college gets stressful. Students may find themselves struggling to balance keeping top of their academic responsibilities and leaving time out for socializing, especially if they just entered a new environment. The absence of a suitable platform for students to connect with peers at UW can exacerbate these challenges, as detailed on the right.

Therefore, we intend to design a solution that combats the lack of resources for students to use when building their projects and resumes while still having fun by talking to new people and networking for career opportunities. 

How might we help connecting students at UW who have similar interests and compatible skills so that they can make connections and find project and team members on campus?

Research

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of our target audience, we conducted an intensive 2-week research sprint. This involved administering surveys to current students at UW, as well as conducting one-on-one interviews with a diverse range of participants, including both underclassmen and upperclassmen, in order to ensure balanced and representative statistical analysis.

Some of the questions we included in our survey were:

  • How often do you have the need to find project/team/club members?

  • How do you go about finding or joining extracurricular activities?

  • What social media apps/websites do you use for social connections? 

  • What social media apps/websites do you use for professional connections?

  • How satisfied are you with the current UW networking service when looking for new connections? 

Compiling results from surveys and user interviews, we generated some insights:

Competitive Analysis

Along with user research and interviews, our team also wanted to find the embedded issues with current social and professional networking apps as well as the advantages they bring to the users, we dove deeper into the market and did a competitive analysis of some of the more popular networking apps via results we found through surveys, interviews, and real world use. These include Instagram, Discord, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Meet the Users

Our process started with formulating a couple of personas to help guide the content of the app. By creating personas on our target users, we were able to view from the user’s perspective to meet their needs and prioritized features.

Ideation

Since we want UDAWGS to serve as a professional and social platform for UW students, there are a lot of things we wanted to cover for the two different purposes. Our team spent a lot of time discussing the most important features we need to include and prioritize as well as our user flow of our app. Some key takeaways include: 

  • Having a tailored user profile with a space where users can link their portfolio

  • Referencing the Tinder swiping style where users can swipe and discover new projects/peers

  • Adding a “clap” and save function for users to endorse project members

Information Architecture

Low-fidelity Wireframes

Before embarking onto preliminary user testing and high fidelity mockups, our team brainstormed on potential UI designs, practicing the approach of crazy 8 and illustrating wireframes to get a feel for the app and its core features.

We ran a total of 5 usability tests among UW students. The users provided feedback on the accessibility, readability, and interactivity of the low-fidelity prototype.

Then, we reviewed necessary features and focused on screens that needed improvement. As our primary features of the app are user and project matching and community feed, we asked users about their preference for information extraction, visual appeal, and screening abilities. We also found that users tend to favor the "Tinder-style" swiping interaction for discovering potential UW students and projects that they may be able to contribute to in the future, in contrast to navigating through the community feed. This outcome aligns with our objective of integrating both social and professional aspects into a single feature of our application.

Usability Tests & Feedback

Stylescape

Given that our application is primarily targeted towards the University of Washington's student body, we decided to adopt an illustration of the university's mascot, the Husky, as our logo. We also employed colors that epitomize school spirit to represent our purpose. The following is the style-scape we came up with for our new app.

High-fidelity Prototype

Highlighted Features

UDawgs eliminates the anxiety and uncertainty of finding projects to collaborate on and peers to network with by implementing the Tinder-style "swiping" strategy. Users can swipe down on cards to explore potential matches that could enhance their university experience. We prioritize the information displayed on the cards to maximize the time spent on the app, including the project's description, category, and the student's major and interests.

Matching

Users have the ability to "clap" on the projects they like or are interested in to show support for the project team. Additionally, by clicking on the message feature, students can directly message the project leader to request more information about the project or apply to join the team as a member.

Clap and Chat

Users have the option to select from different areas they would like to explore further, including Projects, Huskies, and Posts. The page is intended to provide a more formal introduction to the projects and users on the app, catering to students who may not want to swipe through cards to make new connections.

Explore More

Design Overview

At the annual Design For America fair, our team showcased the UDawgs mobile app to a diverse audience of over 70 attendees. Our presentation provided an in-depth overview of our problem-solving approach and design process, which involved extensive user research and a commitment to user-centered design principles. We highlighted our design decisions by presenting wireframes, style guides, and interactive prototypes, showcasing a comprehensive and visually captivating design.

Furthermore, we discussed the challenges encountered throughout the design process and the process of overcoming them to deliver an effective solution. This reflection allowed us to demonstrate our problem-solving abilities and underscored our team's resilience in the face of obstacles.

The presentation not only served as an opportunity to display our design skills but also allowed us to receive valuable feedback from the attendees.

Retrospective

Udawgs is the first app I’ve designed so it has been a rewarding design project I’ve enjoyed working through the year. Guided by a mentor, Jayson Edwards, who was a past president for Design for America and now a UX designer at a software development firm, our team had the privilege to get incredible insights on our work and advices we took to advance our young careers. Throughout the process, I learned the different process of designing an app from start to finish and the importance of prioritizing users’ feedback over our assumptions.

Listen to the users

Due to time constraints, we weren’t able to conduct as much interviews and user testing with students from different majors as we would like to. We also weren’t able to test our final prototype. Moving forward, we would like to conduct more usability testing and iterations to gain a deeper understanding of how we can best serve the needs of UW students

Bringing new functions

We are committed to incorporating more accessibility designs to ensure that all students, regardless of any challenges they may face, can easily navigate through the app. Additionally, some users have suggested new features such as games, schedules, and alumni accounts. We are considering these proposals and exploring ways to incorporate them into UDawgs to enhance the overall user experience throughout their university journey.