Designing a Campus-Centric E-Commerce App
Context
Cal Poly University - education
4 months
Tools Used
Figma
Adobe Photoshop
My Contribution
User research
Research synthesis
MVP Design
Wireframes
Hi-fi Design
Prototyping
Team
Renee Yu, UX Designer
Arielle Sanders, UX Designer
Vincenzo C, Lead Designer
Mark Green, Design Director
Business Background
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo was forced to adopt existing food ordering app quickly to tackle the issue of dining safety procedures during COVID-19.
The Challenge
The current online ordering experience is not meeting expectations of many.
The utilization decreases significantly after students complete their first year
Campus experience is fragmented among multiple applications
Product Goals
Design goals:
- Understand user needs and pain points
- Create experience that caters towards college demographic
Business goals:
- Adoptable and meet the needs of application monetization
- Collect users’ behaviors and patterns on campus
My success metrics:
- Research finding results
- MVP roadmap that includes different phases of feature release
The Outcome
We designed a college-centric food ordering application that is not just about food. The application is designed to expand adoption and usage to not only students, but as well as the overall university community - alumni, staff, and visitors. Students and client are all really happy with the design and we’re proceeding to phase 2 of the project.
The Approach
Research
After alignment session with the stakeholders, the team conducted desk research, in-person interviews, and competitor analysis to better understand the current process and pain points.
Findings & Insights
We databased the interview notes and codified each insight to pull out the key data points regarding needs, motivations, goals, and aspirations. By clustering related data points, clear themes emerged.
User Types & Archetypes
Utilizing customer groups that emerged from qualitative research. Each of these archetypes represent a collection of shared behaviors, attitudes, needs, motivations, and aspirations. These span across student roles and customer market segments.
Experience Mapping
With clear user models and their needs, we created experience mapping to understand the stages of online ordering experience.
Crafting the Vision
After multiple sessions of co-creation workshops. We prioritized each feature launch and defined the MVP for release 1.
MVP Goals
1.
The application should be simple and work well
2.
The application should build the foundation for monetization
3.
The application should boost adoption beyond meal plans holders
Delivery
We delivered an MVP roadmap that includes difference phases of feature release and a mid-fidelity prototype with 35 screens.
The Impact
Enabled social connectivity, campus navigation, dorm groceries, non-food commerce, alumni gifting, and more
Easily adoptable application among all colleges to meet the business needs of monetization and to learn about users’ behaviors and patterns on campus