ClassHub: app for students to find classes near them

APP Early Stages

Final Interactive Prototype

Project Brief: We identified the challenge of students accessing a variety of local classes since they are not offered at their particular institution or students are unable to find the specific class they need, so through our product we're simplifying student struggles for class enrollment.

Customers/Needs: As an app targeted towards students, we interviewed fellow students about our storyboards centered around a problem we found while reading through an interview with a former teacher. Creating solutions based around the lack of involvement of students in lesson planning we found a bigger problem in how students are unable to get the classes they need. With our app idea, we addressed the need for a user-friendly platform to discover and enroll in nearby classes easily.

Design Approach: In our finalized prototype, I thought to emphasize simplicity and user-friendliness in the UI by adopting common design elements from successful apps to enhance user recognition, and making everything easily accessible throughout the app. I implemented recognizable symbols (i.e., a red asterisk) for required information, and search/home icons so its obvious what those buttons do.

Example Iterations: After receiving user feedback, we had realized the struggle to navigate to previous screens thus implementing more "return" buttons, especially for the teacher's side of the app as it is more complex to use, with many more features than signing up and enrolling in classes. 

Change in Approach: In the makings of the final prototype, since less people were involved in creating it, one of the components we had many back and forth discussions about was what to do with the "burger menu." It was previously suggested by another group member and was a good idea, however we didn't find much need for it besides a home button, which is when we changed the idea of a burger menu to just have a home icon.

Obstacles: Since we are all individual people with individual ideas, we had to figure out how to combine all of our ideas into one while still keeping the overall app simplicity and functionality. But these design challenges weren't too difficult to pan out as we only had to make small tweaks and teammates weren't too picky. For example, in our rough key screen design a group member wanted a radial gradient, however feeling it was a bit strange looking we settled for a linear gradient with generally the same colors.

Reflection: For the end product, I would emphasize the location aspect of our app as it is the main thing we are promoting for students to use our app. Methods I could use to implement this is also including it in the class search window, allowing students to expand or scale down on the distance they're able to travel to get to class. Another change I would have made was to remove the search bar in the teacher APP perspective, perhaps instead there would be a dropdown menu for teachers to get to the specific window they want to get to easier. 

Credits:

Final Website Poster Design: taking storyboarding and task flows to show thought process, key screens from final prototype to show off UI

Evelyn Fu

Final Interactive APP Prototype: overall key screen designs, search/home asset components, wire-framing, making adjustments with feedback

Evelyn Fu, Cho Wing Koon

Final Pitch Video: talking about overall app making process, app demo

Evelyn Fu

Final Problem/Product Brief: changing overall problem after initial problem was changed

Scott Crittendon

Usability Evaluation Report: conducting Heuristic and Cognitive Walkthrough Reports

Connor Hill (Heuristic), Justin Xu (Heuristic), Cho Wing Koon (Cognitive Walkthrough)

User Feedback: tested app prototype with other students and teachers to get consumer mindset 

Scott Crittendon

Rough Key Screen and Wire-frames (whole group): color palette, key screen appearances, planning wire-frames for both students and teachers

Evelyn Fu, Elliot Crisp, Scott Crittendon, Connor Hill, Cho Wing Koon, Justin Xu