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Helper App
High Fidelity Prototype and Case Study
Overview
Time
March - June 2023 (11 Weeks)
Skills
Figma, Low/Mid/High Fidelity Prototyping, Usability Research, Project Managing
Roles
UX Designer/ Project Lead/ Researcher
Project Summary
The college student dropout rate is at an all time high - how can we change that experience that would help bring that rate back down?
Throughout my career as a college student at DePaul, I’ve noticed how difficult it can be to stay on top of your assignments and coursework. This isn’t just my experience, but a shared one throughout universities all across the country. This isn't an exclusive experience. Students all over the country encounter this very same problem.
What's the solution to this problem? The Helper App.
The Helper App is an organizational planner app developed in order to make student's lives easier.
Research
"40% of students drop out of college every year in the US."
This was an eye-opening statistic from ThinkImpact that launched this project. What leads such a large amount of students to drop out of college entirely?
In order to answer this question, multiple rounds of interviews were completed. These interviews included 5 course research questions that would assist in developing a deeper understanding of the problem at hand.
The questions included were:
1. Do you feel like you have trouble managing your time well? (assignments, social life, health, etc.)
2.) Do you often forget about assignments and due dates?
3.) Do you feel like remembering all of your classwork is difficult or overwhelming?
4.) Do you need to set reminders for yourself?
5.) Do you create lists of all your assignments?
The results from these interviews, as well as findings from our previous research then lead to the creation of an affinity map.
From the affinity maps, a common theme was discovered:
College students fail to manage their time efficiently
It was determined that time management and overall stress regarding staying on top of coursework was the most difficult challenge for students, especially students who had just entered college.
From our findings, it was decided that the best way to solve this problem would be a planner app that would connect to student's D2L to automatically display and organize their assignments while also allowing users to add their own tasks and appointments. It would be a combination of a calendar app as well as a school planner.
Prototyping
With these findings now sorted and a solid baseline achieved, the group then created paper prototypes.
Figma Screens
Reflection
If I could go through this project again now, there are a few things I would approach differently:
1.) I would research other popular planner apps that people use.
2.) I would interview more people with a more defined target user base.
3.) Create personas based on our user interviews.
4.) Conduct way more rounds of user testing if time allowed.
Looking back on this project, I think there were quite a few opportunities to delve deeper into the research process so that we could have a deeper understanding of what students are looking for in an app like this. I think we missed out on potential features and the usability of our prototype wasn't tested thoroughly enough, so usability issues may not have been discovered properly.
If I was able to go back in time, then I would make sure our group diligently performed user interviews and conducted plenty of usability testing before finalizing the high-fidelity prototype.
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