A mobile application that helps UW students connect with others based on their interests.
DubMatch
Overview
Currently, there is no viable and effective solution for UW undergraduates to connect with other students with interests in their classes. Students sometimes reach out to other students through social media, friends, clubs, or fraternities/sororities but this solution is often ineffective because those friends are not in the same class. UW students need a tool to connect them with classmates who share their interests.
Duration
8 weeks
My Role
UX/UI Design, UX Research, Graphic Design, Video Creator
Jump to: User Research 📄 || Design Goal 🎯 || Mockups📱|| Usability Testing 📲|| Takeaways ☑️ ||
Problem Statement
Connecting classmates together is a problem that has existed for a while and is likely to continue. There’s no existing, relevant method that connects UW students with each other. The problem area I wanted to solve is “how might we help UW students meet other students with similar interests in their classes?”
Stakeholder Issues
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Difficulting connecting with peers
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Limited opportunities to make friends in classes
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Lack of resources for transfer/international students
User Research
Surveys
I sent a survey to University of Washington (UW) students covering their experiences connecting with classmates. I asked questions in my survey to identify the causes behind UW undergraduates’ difficulty meeting classmates. The most relevant set of questions are :
“How important is it to make friends in classes?”
“Why is it important for you to make friends in classes?”
“Would you benefit from making a new friend in a current course you are enrolled in?”
“Do you think it is hard to make friends in classes?” and “If you answered ‘Yes’ to the previous question, why?”
Interview with domain experts
I interviewed two professors at the University of Washington to demonstrate how students at UW interact with each other in the professors’ views. The key questions I asked were:
“What do you think are some barriers limiting student interaction in both remote and in-person classes?”
“What methods do you use as a professor to increase student interaction in classes? Which methods have been effective?”
“How would you describe current student interaction levels in your in-person classes? What do you think the reason for this is?”
“For group projects, do you notice a difference in the performance of randomly-assigned groups compared to student-formed groups? Why do you think this is?”
💬 Interview’s takeaways :
The most important takeaway I learned from the domain experts was:
Social anxiety is one of the biggest barriers limiting student interaction. While active pedagogies that encourage relationship-building are important in facilitating student interaction, many students still refuse to engage even if professors use these active learning methods. The professor suspects this is largely due to students’ lack of motivation or social anxiety.
Randomly matching students in a class can facilitate relationship-building for students who don’t have an established community of classmates. Bringing students together can allow them to meet new people and open themselves up to a new environment.
Relationship-building is not intuitive for most students, who sometimes need to be “pushed” to interact with classmates.
Many teachers are not using active engagement methods in classes to help encourage students to interact.
💬 Survey’s takeaways :
One cause revealed through these questions is introversion. Several students noted that making friends in classes is difficult due to their introverted personalities.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, students were only able to interact with classmates in an online environment, which likely created barriers to making genuine friendships.
A lack of resources for out-of-state students. Many out-of-state students start at UW without knowing anyone, as opposed to many in-state students who know people from high school or community college. A lack of resources (e.g. social events, clubs) specifically for out-of-state students may exacerbate this difficulty.
Design Goal
The goal of this design project is going to address the fact that many introverts struggle to talk to others. The idea is to help introverts connect with each other and get past the mental barriers that cause difficulties to meet others. Breaking out of their barriers, it does not mean that they have to change themselves, but they can just seek out others who have the same interests.
User Personas
User Journey Map
Sitemap
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Mockups
Usability Testing
I conducted usability testing both remote and in-person. I focused on onboarding, matching quizzes, and chat/call features. The prompts I asked users were :
Let’s say you want to find a friend who’s taking the same class with the same interests. What would you do?
Let’s say you want to connect with your friends from your contacts who are also taking the same class. How would you set that up?
Let's say you’re having trouble with homework and need some help. What would you do?
💬 Key Learnings
The most important takeaways from the usability tests are :
The onboarding process is tedious; many of the app’s features are obsolete, and the app lacks clarity in what its use case is for.
The color theme and overall UI of the application were well received. The overall flow of the application was noted as easy to navigate.
The interest quizzes were either too long, had various questions, or were hard to follow. Some users described that they liked the idea of using the quizzes, but since they had too many questions and there was a lot to scroll through, users quickly lost interest in them. However, users enjoyed the results of the matching percentages from the quizzes and being able to connect with other users with similar interests.
Insights & Improvements
Takeaway 1: Too similar to Instagram (changed to discussion boards)
Issue
Test users thought my design was too similar to Instagram and wouldn’t use the features because Instagram already exists.
Seemed like just another social media platform but for UW students only.
Improvement(s)
I went back and decided my design didn’t fit the initial goal to be academic-oriented and to help connect with peers in the user’s class. I chose to use the user’s courses as their homepage with access to group chats and discussion boards instead of a picture posting feature like Instagram.
Takeaway 2: Shorten quiz questions & include a progress bar
Issue
Most of the users liked the quiz idea, but they said that the quiz page was too long and they have to scroll down too much. Moreover, some users also said that it would be nicer if they can see the progress while taking the quizzes.
Improvement(s)
I decided to break up quizzes into separate pages and add the progress bar on the top. With these changes, users don’t have to scroll down to finish the quiz in addition to seeing the progress on each question.
Takeaway 3: Add quiz results & percent match (new screens)
Issue
On the quiz results page with the matched people, the users wanted to know more information about who they matched with such as the percentage match, and more.
Improvement(s)
To address the issue of too many questions and the “type in a response” questions, I decided to make our quiz questions mostly multiple choices to make users go through the quizzes more efficiently.
For the profile match results page, I added a percentage match showing the percent number and what class the person is in with the user.
Takeaways & What I’d do differently
❇️ A usability test is important because you will never get anything right the first time: conducting usability testing helped me to improve my design. Without a usability test, I wouldn’t know what exact things users like or dislike about the app. Getting the right design may take multiple iterations of user feedback.
❇️ Consider more user edge cases earlier such as :
Accessibility
What if someone didn’t match with anyone at all?
what is someone using this app for dating?
These are something DubMatch lacks. I will have to think more about all these user edge cases to improve my design in order to benefit all users.