Capstone - Personalized Notifications for WLU students
TEAM LEAD / UX RESEARCHER / UX DESIGNER / PROJECT MANAGER -
CLIENT -
UNLESS DESIGN PARTNERS & WILFRED LAURIER UNIVERSITY
SAMER HAK
This Capstone project is a multifaceted body of work that served as academic and intellectual experience. The Dean of Students’ Offices’ at Waterloo & Brantford campuses initiated a multi-campus review of student wellness at Laurier. The Capstone is concentrated on delivering the goals / objectives that Unless Design Partners are working towards which were related to increasing student experience and wellness initiatives. The course of this project was over 8 months, and you can find our research methods, user interview/user testing findings, prototypes, and the final iteration of our design that we believe will best help students’ wellness. Personalized Notifications is a way for students to navigate messages and information from Laurier. This design tackles wellness initiatives by making sure students are receiving the information that they want, when they want it.
Page overview:
Problem
Unless Design Partners came to us with the issue that Wilfrid Laurier University students lacked the information, they needed to improve their wellness. How can we apply what already works for more effective, accurate communication between students and faculty?
Goal
Our goal was to bring forward a solution that will increase the overall student experience and wellness for students at WLU, and for it to be feasible.
Action
As UX Team lead I oversaw all activities and conducted user interviews / cognitive walkthroughs, led secondary research, built the prototype, ran user testing and pitched our solution to clients and the judges for our Capstone.
Impact
Currently in works with WLU to work on implementation for incoming future students. Presented project to stakeholders and judges. Received 100/100 marks for Capstone.
Problem
Context
Unless Design Partners presented their multi-campus review of student wellness at Laurier. We quickly realized their report covered a very large scope. After multiple rounds of user interviews, secondary research and feedback sessions we noticed patterns in all the pain points surrounding communication at Laurier.
The multi-campus review also stated:
“Relevance of information doesn’t align with the timing of when students need it”
Unless Design Partners came to us with the issue that Wilfrid Laurier University students lacked the information, they needed to improve their wellness. At Laurier, the students are not aware of the services that are offered or what information is relevant to them. Ultimately, their wellness begins to get neglected and becomes an afterthought. Our team soon realized that the problem students were facing was regarding the number of information they are bombarded with daily. The information that should have been helping the students improve their wellness is negatively affecting their well-being.
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Wellness is a broad category that includes various topics like; financial wellness, spiritual wellness, physical wellness, mental wellness, etc. Our team wanted to ensure that Laurier students find information on wellness and other school events or opportunities without the hassle.
So we asked...
How might we ensure that students are getting the right information they want / need at the appropriate time in a clear way?​
Goal
Minimize noise and increase signal
Increase wellness information & overall student experience for WLU
Connect students to resources / one another
Feasibility
Action
My responsibilities as UX Team Lead
Taking UX team lead on this project for 8 months I took on many roles. I was responsible for conducting user interviews and cognitive walkthroughs, leading secondary research, prototyping, conduct user testing and presenting the final pitch to clients and judges. During the course of this project there were many other activities such as building personas, client relationship management, wire-framing and experience mapping. I oversaw all activities in this project. Altogether, this Capstone allowed me to design an impactful solution and get real world experience.
Secondary Research
When we started going over the multi-campus review given to us by the clients, we noticed a couple issues that stuck out to us.
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"Relevance of information doesn't align with the timing of when students need it."
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"Negative messages get more traction than positive ones. Additionally, there are mixed messages coming from sources of influence - from official and unofficial channels. Some students experience more 'noise' than 'signal' as it relates to wellness-related communications and Laurier communication in general."
We conducted multiple rounds of brainstorming on the questions to determine what was most relevant to Laurier students' everyday situations.
We came up with several points from the wide range of questions:
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Student wellness
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Noise vs Signal
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Events
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The Entry point for these questions was: Laurier students looking for information.
User Interviews
During the research phase, we started by understanding the main usage habits of the users. We first investigated where students got information about Laurier from. We conducted user interviews and got feedback from 23 students.
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The results showed that:
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Students get their information from their friends or through word of mouth.
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Most students are accustomed to using social media to ask groups of friends for answers to their questions.
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Laurier students are left to passively receive recommendations from the school, such as the weekly news.
When asked "Which communication channel would you prefer to receive important info or any info about the school and why?"
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The most frequent response was text messages.
One of the participants explained,
“I get so much info; I miss it and just don’t look. I’m always on my phone, I never check my emails, I’ll always read a text”
We realized the efficiency in the current emailing system used to disseminate information is low. We went on to get to the heart of the matter, trying to understand the main pain points of Laurier students' daily email checking experience.
When asked about their experience with email, one participant said.
“I hate getting spammed, especially when I get all these emails; I usually never check them”
We created journey maps of what a WLU students might currently go through when they are trying to find information
One pain point we noticed for students when they were skimming through their inboxes was that they were developing notification anxiety. They were receiving too many emails and spam - students were overloaded with the amount of information and failed to see important details.
As the student looks through the email, there's another pain point of there being more noise than signal. For students, the amount of information received in their Laurier emails is much more noise than any signal, which also causes a feeling of disconnect. Reaching out to their friends is also a pain point because it adds yet another communication channel.
Findings
Through these user interviews one point that stuck out and resonated with us was the problem of students experiencing more “noise” than “signal “in terms of Laurier communications
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We learned that students get a lot of notifications and miss Laurier emails
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We learned that Laurier emails are usually filled with too much information that people barely read
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We learned that SMS messages / notifications have the highest view rate
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We learned that students prefer to text, rather than emails.
“I’d much rather use texting rather than emails. I get so much info I miss and just don’t look at. I’m always on my phone, never check emails, I’ll always read a text”
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“80% of the emails from Laurier don't interest me, or aren't related to me”
Ideation
When we began ideating we noticed a lot of communication is delivered to students' Laurier email. This results in students receiving vast amounts of emails from the school. If students link their MyLearningSpace notifications to their school email, the total amount of emails they receive can even double. In addition, most email applications on smartphones are tied to more than one email address. Multiple email addresses, a massive number of daily emails, and only one phone as an inbox will lead to being bombarded with emails. Students will experience avoidance behaviour and unnecessary tension when receiving emails or hearing notification sounds. So based on the above findings, we decided to build a personalized notification system that allows Laurier students to filter out noise based on existing platforms and mental models.
From our brainstorming page on Figma
Prototyping
This whole project has been prototyped on Figma. We started working on the first iteration of our Personalized Notification System for WLU students. We decided to build off working existing mental models, so the basis of our platform was LORIS (Laurier Online Registration & Information System). The page design follows LORIS and Laurier’s branding guidelines were followed throughout the UI.
Here is the first iteration of wireframe based on the LORIS interface:
Here is the first iteration of the prototype:
After completing the skeleton of the first version of the prototype, we started adding details. This included confirmation pages, pop-ups, the look of messages received on the SMS end, and the look of emails received on the email end. This gave us the first version of the untested prototype.
Confirmation page
Pop-ups
SMS & E-mail
Testing
Our goal was to make the design easy to use and intuitive during the testing phase. We set up two rounds of usability tests to identify issues in the prototype. We gained critical insights into the participants' initial thoughts on the product and observed how the design worked while they navigated through it. We conducted 2 rounds of cognitive walkthroughs and one round of A/B tests. In the cognitive walkthroughs, participants were asked to use the think-aloud technique to say what they saw and thought when solving the problem and performing tasks.
Our first round of usability testing included 18 participants. The second round included 13 participants, of which 10 took part in A/B tests. All participants were informed of the process and purpose of the test and understood that the testing process would be recorded.
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The tasks they were asked to complete in the cognitive walkthrough include:
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Where would you go to get notified?
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How would you update your interests?
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What would you do if you were not sure what these tags meant?
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What do you think happens if you click an interest?
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What would you do if an interest you have is not there?
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How would you add your contact information?
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How would you remove your contact information?
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After going through everything, can you tell me what the purpose of this service is?
We also had to decide on the arrangement and organization of the tags. We prepared two designs for the A/B test and let the participants decide which one suited them better.
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The question we asked is:
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Which design works better for you and why?
Iteration
After the first round of cognitive walkthroughs, we found that the product was lacking in many areas. However, while most of the participants were disappointed with the prototype, we received valuable feedback, which can be summarized in the following categories:
Naming Issues
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The name does not allow users to quickly determine the function
Visual Issues
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The font does not match LORIS font
Functional Issues
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Clearing and saving functions
Lack of necessary explantation and hints
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Users are not clear about the meaning of some tags​
Low fidelity and usability of the prototype
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Some buttons are not available and shift on some screens
Users understood the functionality of the design, but a few minimal changes were made to clear some minor confusion. Based on feedback from the first round of testing, the following changes were made.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
We then conducted a second cognitive walkthrough, and the test results did not reflect significant problems. We also conducted A/B Tests on the arrangement and distribution of tags. The data collected from a limited number of participants showed that half of the users supported the first option.
Overview of final prototype
Impact
Presented work to stakeholders, received 100/100 marks on this case study
Currently working with WLU to implement our solution for future students
Our team is proud of the implemented design that we have created over the last 8 months. Our design has given students the ability to receive information and filter out noise. We believe that this design will help reduce students' unpleasant and unnecessary psychological stresses of accessing information in their daily studies.
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Once students are actually using Personalized Notifications, we expect the impact to go beyond our solution. By using our personalized notification delivery system, we plan to tackle more than the students just getting relevant information when they need it. With awareness comes an increase in the overall student experience, allowing students to feel connected and alleviate anxiety this increases the signal on important info and will ripple throughout the system.