Study Room Booking

Study Room Booking @ University of Toronto

Booking a study room at the University of Toronto is often frustrating to use because of the lack of information about study rooms, and does not have a centralized booking website for the entire university; can we fix these issues with good design?

Quick Summary 

Study Room Booking is a website for the University of Toronto's students to book study rooms in a centralized booking site that is designed much better compared to the existing website. Our goal was to mitigate the frustration of booking study rooms by making the UX design layout more accessible and user-friendly, displaying study room information, having pictures, and easily sharing room information with peers and friends without the use of social media or text messaging. 

Affinity Diagram

Once we got responses through our surveys, and interviews. We use the Affinity Diagram which allows us to organize all ideas and and data that we received from the surveys and during our interview sessions with university students. 

User Profile and User Persona

After doing the interviews, affinity diagram, and secondary research. We were able to define our target audience at the University of Toronto that will use the Study Room Booking website. After determining our target audience, we created a user persona which is a fictional character that represents the user profile (Target Audience) to provide deeper information about the user's needs and wants.

Key Painpoints

From our research and persona-building, we identified the 4 following painpoints and hypothetical solutions for them:

• Steve needs a way to look for all available study rooms through a centralized booking system.

• Steve needs a way to book study rooms through its website on all devices.

• Steve needs a way to see all information such as accessibility and tools within a study room.

• Steve needs a way to easily share booked study room information with group members prior to the submission of the booking.

4 Essential features

From our brainstorming session, we came up with 4 essential features to solve Steve's needs based on feasibility and their impact on Steve’s painpoints

• A booking reservation page that shows Steve all available study rooms at all libraries and study spaces of University of Toronto.

• A booking reservation page that shows Steve to see all room information such as accessibility needs and tools.

• A confirmation page that allows Steve to send room information to his group members or peers.

• A study room booking website that allows Steve to access in all devices that can provide the same exact quality as a desktop.

Step 3: Experimentation

For our experimentation process, we started by making random sketches and then organizing them into a paper-sketch prototype. This allowed us to quickly test the usability of our ideas and make changes based on user feedback. When we were confident in the usability and workflow of our design, then we created a wireframe to see a visual representation of the website.

Low-Fidelity Paper Prototype

Step 4: Evolution

Next-Steps

After conducting usability testing for our wireframe prototype, we received feedback that the "Cancel" button label on confirm cancellation popup was confusing whether it exits the popup or cancels the reservation. So, then we realized that we should rename the "Cancel" button to "Cancel Reservation" to make it more user-friendly for the students to understand the meaning behind each interaction. To phase into a high-fidelity prototype, we plan to add sample pictures of the study rooms to replace the placeholders. We also plan to create a logo and add colour to the wireframe to support brand recognizability.

Lesson Learned/Reflection

To create a better product and design in the future, I identified the following information from this project:

• Usability testing should be done more often as possible throughout the design process to maximize free of errors in the final product.

• We could make the usability testing experience much better for the students by making the paper prototypes appear in a layout that is similar to a real website that a user will browse on the website or mobile. This may allow the students to provide more information that could allow us to make a better final product for the website.

• After presenting our presentation to the class, we learned that a lot of students are interested in having a waitlist option on the study room booking website. So, we need to implement the waitlist option as soon as possible during our next version release. 

• We could have made our wireframes prototype clickable by allowing the user to click on a specific annotation from one page to another page since that will allow more of a real user experience feeling similar to a final product. 

• We tried our best to create our website more user-friendly, and easy to navigate, but there are still certain spots that are confusing for the user. So, we should try to consider all the information from the usability testing to have the best quality website.   

• Through this project, I have learned a lot of skills and improved the knowledge that would make me more successful in future projects:

  1. 1. 1. I learned a lot of practical experience in this project, which allowed me to understand some of the course concepts that I learned in class. 

        2. I learned to create wireframes for the first time, which makes me feel that I am an expert. 

        3. I gained lots of social skills from collaborating with my team throughout the project, and with others through usability testing.

        4. I learned some research skills through secondary research points, which will allow me to understand more useful information relevant to the product for future assignments. 

        5. Overall, I now feel very confident to work in more UX Design, and other product projects by myself or with others because of all the skills I gained in this project that has improved my overall knowledge of UX Design. I am confident that I will soon become a UX Designer in the near future.