welhome

OVERVIEW

Welhome is an app for Loughborough University students who struggle to find accommodation as the new academic year starts. The aim is to improve the wellbeing, organization, communication and academic success by identifying and applying an iterative human centred process.

OBJECTIVE

Welhome requires a design for an iOS mobile app, along with clearly defined branding that is connected to Loughborough University’s branding. The experience can be presented in a prototype that effectively shows the key features users need from an accommodation finding app with the help of Artificial Intelligence.

PROCESS / DELIVERABLES

1

RESEARCH

SECONDARY RESEARCH

To know what to learn from user interviews, we made a secondary research and created a concrete base for our research.

ASSUMPTIONS

Lifestyle: New city - Unknown environment - Complicated contracts

Emotional: Isolation - Feeling lost - Different language/culture

USER INTERVIEWS

We conducted 1:1 user interviews as primary research in order to learn directly from potential users about how they found their current and past accommodations, dig through their experiences and what they would like to have in their future accommodation search. The interviews were conducted in-person and all participants identified themselves as newcomers to Loughborough.

Goal: To define the target user’s needs, goals, motivations and frustrations based on research findings

Used Techniques: Contextual Interviews | Timeline Technique | Card Sorting Activity | Creative Brainstorming

Timeline Technique

We asked our participants to recall a accommodation searching memory in a new city preferably Loughborough and draw a timeline according to the key points they encountered. This helped the process to be smoother by reminding them the process in detail and expressing themselves easily.

Card Sorting Activity

Then we gave them some cards related to the possible priorities of them when choosing an accommodation and asked to sort them in their importance order. Then talked in detail about each card, also we gave them the flexibility to add their own cards.

Creative Brainstorming

We asked them to imagine a god-like figure and ask them what would they want from him/her. It is beneficial and easy to gather insights from surreal ideas of participants since it gives hints about the deeply lying problems they encounter but they won’t mention in normal situations.

2

DEFINE

AFFINITY MAPPING

After transcribing the recordings of my conversations, I organized participants’ statements according to patterns that emerged. Then we grouped those statements based on commonalities and themes to determine key insights and identify user needs.

PERSONAS

After creating the affinity map we developed 2 primary personas, fictional representations of our target users, landlord and school representative. Creating a persona helped us to humanize our target user and see their pain points and experience goals they wanna reach with the possible application.

HOW MIGHT WE QUESTIONS

GENERATING SOLUTIONS FOR HMW QUESTIONS

BUSINESS & USER GOALS

We identified the business and user goals for the product. The business goals were drawn from the project brief and landlord persona, the user goals were pulled directly from student personas. The common points among these two sets of these goals were then used to generate shared goals, which I considered as well.

3

IDEATE

STORYBOARD

I wanted to further explore how WelHome might meet one of Min’s needs, like suggesting on-point houses when she is abroad and after signing up for a house it eliminated the complicated contract reading by smart contract analyser.

APP MAP

In the end product, it was wanted to present a user flow that shows the key features of WelHome. In order to do that, I decided on an app map to ease the process. This gave me which pages are necessary and how logical connections can be made between the screens.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Before jumping to wireframing I wanted to determine design principles of Welhome. since the audience is students which are in the category of young adults and the researches stated that they are visually oriented, they are sensitive to application language and they are confident in their own ability to navigate digital interfaces even when encountering radically new design patterns.

4

DESIGN

SKETCHES

After determining the basis of the application the trial sketches have been made. What is need to be added functionally where it should be placed are decided roughly.

WIREFRAME

The sketches converted into wireframes using Sketch and the detailed layout is achieved for user-testing.

BRANDING

I developed a branding for Welhome with keeping in mind the design principles that I determined earlier: Friendly, innovative, universal, direct communication.

5

PROTOTYPE

USABILITY TESTING

6

ITERATE

ITERATION

In the light of the comments and my individual evaluation I decided to change some parts of my design. I believe with this little touches the overall experience enhanced significantly.

FINAL DESIGN

After implementing the UI properties to the iterated version of WelHome, the final design is ready. The overall experience is a linear one to show every feature of the application rather than giving testers the optimum freedom.