academy lobby

Google Design Challenge -
ACADEMY LOBBY

Role
Research, UX, Visual Design
Timeline
One Week
A brand new way to connect the new and experienced students from the Academy of Art University.
ABOUT
This project is a passed design exercise for a 2020 User Experience Design internship at Google.
I designed an end-to-end experience for a mobile experience which is focusing on creating meaningful connections between mentor and mentees.
Challenge
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.
Research &Problem Discovery
WHO could be mentors?
I listed some questions before starting to research. Through "encouraging experienced students to connect with new students and help them adjust to campus life", I can tell that this product is more beneficial to new students. So how can we attract experienced students to register as mentors for this product?
What I want to learn?
  • What does the student who has the potential to be a mentor look like? (Behavior and motivation)
  • What kind of problems do new students really want to ask mentors for help with?
  • What is "campus life" for new students?
  • What kind of connections between new students     and experienced students create?
Research &Problem Discovery
What are the student's needs?
I conducted three different survey forms to get data from new students and experienced students.
The data confirmed the product is a new student’s real need and helped me understand that new students want to get information from experienced students about selecting classes and career advice instead of "campus life".
57.1%
New Students
Getting help through connecting with experienced students
41.9%
New Students
Want to get advice about register for classes
38.7%
New Students
Want to get advice about register for employment
50%
Experienced Students
Willing to help new students
Research &Problem Discovery
Why are mentors willing to help?
I conducted 6 interviews with experienced students to understand their motivations and concerns for being willing to connect with new students.
MOTIVATIONS
Giving Back
"I was fortunate to receive a lot of key information from my mentor. I know that meaningful information is very important for freshmen, and I want to help them the way my mentor helped me."
Building Network
“This world is small, students you helped  will help you back one day.”
CONCERNS
Passive Connection
“I will help a student who asked for help but I may not help everyone, and I won't build a connection with them first."
Time
“I'm willing to help but in the meantime, I don't want to spend too much time answering every student’s questions.”
Research &Problem Discovery
Why do mentees want to get help from experienced students?
I conducted 2 interviews with new students to understand their motivations and behaviors for being willing to connect with new students.
MOTIVATIONS
BEHAVIORS
Effective Way
“By asking experienced students for help, I can directly learn about which courses are worth taking, and which teacher is more responsible. Those type of information cannot be answered in an official way.”
Positive connection
“I really want to connect with experienced students and learn from them.”
Research &Problem Discovery
Learning and Findings
New students and experienced students are willing to connect with each other but for different reasons. I listed my findings for them below:
MOTIVATIONS
BEHAVIORS
Mentor
  • Make the good of time: Time is a factor that old students care about. they want to spend limited time on valuable conversations.
  • Uncontrollable connection: The timing of old students' help is random, depending on their situation and mood at the time.
  • Passive contact: Mentors will not actively seek new students who need help, they will respond when they see new students asking for help.
  • Repeated questions: Many students’ questions are quite similar, and most of the questions can be answered at once.
Mentee
  • Same background: new students tend to connect experienced students with the same major.
  • Active connection: A strong willingness to connect to the mentor but not knowing how to establish a connection.
  • Obtain subjective advice: Compared with clear objective information from the official way, new students prefer to get subjective opinions from experienced students. For example, which course is worth taking, whether the instructor is strict, etc.
Research &Problem Discovery
sOLUTION STATEMENT
Establishing a platform allows mentees to proactively find mentors they want to contact, and create efficient user flows for mentors so that they can help as many mentees as possible in their limited time.
Ideation &Solution Discovery
Sketches
I sketched flows of the sign in and the mentor/mentee connection respectively. At the same time, I considered how to identify new students and experienced students through student ID to save users the time to input information, and how to provide mentors with an efficient way to connect with mentees.
Exploring the feature for experienced students
Initially, I tried categories, labels, and single cards to discover the best solution for the mentor flow, but all those ways were not ideal enough.
‍
So I innovated a new way which is grouped mentees as a group, for mentors only need to click one button then create a camp including all mentees at once, this saves a lot of the process of repeating chat with students and accepting the connection every time.

Ideation &Solution Discovery
wireframes
After drawing the sketches, I used Figma to draw the whole happy flow. In this process, I confirmed some details with mentor and mentees to strength the user experience.
Link to the wireframes
Final Solution
The mentee flow
Final Solution
The mentor flow
Final Solution
ui design
The Login Flow
  • Student identification
  • Auto role identity
  • Matching preference
The Mentee Flow
  • Highly matching cards of mentor
  • Active connection
The Mentor Flow
  • Camp card
  • Group chat
  • Deeper connection

Project takeaway
This is my first attempt to complete a design case independently in just one week. According to the concept of Design Sprint and combined with my own strengths, I worked out a two-day study, one-day prototype, one-day verification and two-day design, and the last day to output Google Slides.

Due to time constraints, I can only rely on design experience to self-evaluate and improve the final design prototype. I am satisfied with the final solution, because it is a innovative connection concept doesn't exist in any other competitors. I will continue to verify the solution to see if it really build a better connection between mentors and mentees.

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