Introduction
👩💻Role
UX Designer
🤝Team
Independent Project
📅Duration
February, 2024 – May, 2024
UX Designer
Independent Project
February, 2024 – May, 2024
Campus Cravings is a mobile app designed to improve the accessibility and experience of Michigan State University's dining hall services. As part of a class, I identified a key problem: students at MSU were struggling to access convenient and diverse dining options, especially during unforeseen circumstances. This study details my process of using user research, ideation, prototyping, and testing to create a solution aimed at solving these challenges.
Dining services are a crucial aspect of student life, but many students face barriers in accessing them. From limited food variety to overcrowded dining halls, students voiced the need for a more convenient and inclusive solution. The challenge was clear: how might we enhance access to dining hall services to better accommodate the diverse needs and preferences of students, ensuring that every student has an equal opportunity to enjoy the dining experience?
Make dining hall services more convenient and accessible by providing students with easy options to access food, whether through delivery, virtual reality, or other innovative solutions.
Offer a wide variety of high-quality food options that cater to diverse dietary preferences and ensure availability and freshness throughout the day.
Solve issues students face when they miss a meal due to unforeseen circumstances, such as illness, scheduling conflicts, or transportation problems, by offering more flexible dining options.
Design an app that prioritizes accessibility and inclusion for all students, ensuring a seamless experience in managing dining options, order tracking, and more.
🔍User Research
💡Ideation
📱Wireframes
👩💻Usability Testing
📊Key Findings
🏁Conclusion
➮ Conducted across 3 MSU dining halls, a series of 5 interviews were executed with students for the purpose of delving into their dining habits, preferences, and challenges.
➮ Interviews were conducted with the objective of uncovering unexpected discoveries that informed the development of more inclusive solutions.
➮ Key Questions Included:
1) What aspects of the dining hall experience do you find most enjoyable?
2) What aspects of dining services do you think could be improved to better meet student needs?
3) Can you recall a time when you missed a meal due to unforeseen circumstances?
Students prefer dining halls located close to their dorms or classes and expressed frustration when they had to travel long distances or encountered transportation challenges.
Students favored dining halls that offered diverse menus with high-quality items. Concerns about freshness, portion sizes, and availability of specific ingredients were raised as areas for improvement.
Students shared experiences of encountering unforeseen circumstances that affected their dining hall visits, such as illness, scheduling conflicts, or transportation issues.
Several students mentioned overcrowding and long lines as challenges in certain dining halls. They prefer dining halls that feel less crowded and more spacious.
Students discussed using external delivery services like Uber Eats or expressing the need for more convenient options, particularly when facing transportation challenges or wanting to avoid crowds.
➮ After identifying themes from user research, I began the ideation process, where I brainstormed and sketched out several potential solutions to address the identified pain points and enhance the overall user experience. This phase involved exploring a variety of ideas on paper, considering different technological approaches and creative concepts to best meet the needs of the users.
➮ A few solutions included:
1) Dining Delivery App⭐
2) Virtual Reality Dining Experience⭐
3) Mobile Dining Pods
4) Dining Hall Innovation Lab
5) Dine and Dash Bike Stations
➮ Narrowing down my sketches from ideation, I pursued 2 for wireframes:
1) Dining Delivery App
2) Virtual Reality Dining Experience
➮ I chose these two ideas to pursue for wireframes because they address my initial design problem of making the dining hall more accessible for students. I also was excited to bring the concept of a virtual reality dining experience to life through paper!
➮ After presenting my low-fidelity wireframes in class, I decided to incorporate augmented reality into the app, allowing students to visualize the dining hall layout, menu items, and real-time wait times for enhanced convenience.
➮ The AR feature was designed to offer a more immersive & engaging experience, helping students navigate dining options easily and make better decisions based on real-time information.
➮ I then moved on to design the high-fidelity wireframes, focusing on key visual design elements and realistic UI components to represent the final look of the app.
➮ I chose a bright, vibrant color palette to engage students and evoke a sense of energy and excitement, making the app more visually appealing. I created the logo on a whim in Adobe Illustrator, experimenting with various design concepts, and ended up liking the result.
➮ After the wireframes were complete, I prototyped them in Figma for usability testing.
➮ I then conducted usability testing to evaluate the Campus Cravings prototype, focusing on how effectively users interacted with key features and identifying any usability challenges.
➮ I conducted the tests with three MSU freshmen who attended the Limitless Club Campus Cravings presentation.
➮ 5 specific tasks were developed for participants to complete while interacting with the prototype, designed to assess key functionality and user experience.
➮ I then observed and recorded participant interactions, noting their click path, navigation choices, and any areas of hesitation or confusion.
➮ Additionally, I rated task completion on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being flawless, 5 indicating incomplete or failed task) to evaluate the effectiveness of the design.
Order tracking emerged as a common challenge across participants, highlighting a need for more intuitive, step-by-step guidance and clearer tracking features within the app.
While the interface design received positive reviews, issues such as menu selection discrepancies and order tracking problems were identified as areas for improvement in order to enhance the overall user experience and app functionality.
Participants had varying comfort levels with the app, but generally provided positive feedback on the ease of navigation and the familiarity of the design, which was similar to other MSU systems.
Feedback consistently pointed out inconsistencies in the food menu selection, with participants expressing confusion or frustration over menu items not being clearly displayed or updated.
Ensure that all food items on the menu are interactive, guiding users seamlessly through the ordering flow.
Improve the order tracking feature by incorporating clearer guidance and visual cues to enhance user experience.
Continue user testing with updated prototypes to validate that the implemented changes effectively resolve usability challenges.
➮ Over the past several months, I’ve reflected on the Campus Cravings app and the journey it took me on. While I haven’t been able to continue actively working on the app, the user feedback and insights gained from MI450 have shaped my design approach.
➮ The experience highlighted the importance of usability testing and understanding user interaction. Challenges, such as menu selection and order tracking, reinforced the need for clarity and simplicity in UX design.
➮ Although development on the app has stalled, I plan to revisit it in the future, applying the lessons learned to refine the app and take it further.
➮ Moving forward, I aim to continue exploring Campus Cravings with a focus on user-centered design, confident that the insights gained will guide my future projects.
