ASHLEY HU
Design Researcher
COSAFE
Service Design/UX project
DURATION
Jan-March, 2020
TEAM
Liuyun Hu
Yue Guo
Yu Chen
Kelin Chai
Qizhe Zhou
PROBLEM
In this Covid-19 pandemic situation, more than 57 million college students living in shared apartments or college dormitories.
How might we help residents to have a more convenient living life and contactless, safe offerings?
CONCEPT
COSAFE is a safe service tailored for residents by providing them with a more convenient moving process and contactless, high-efficient living experiences.
MY ROLE
Prototyping & Usability Testing
Data Synthesis & Interview
Personas & Storyboard
User Journey & Service Design
BACKGROUND
In this Covid-19 pandemic situation, more than 57 million college students are living in shared apartments or college dormitories.
In the shared apartment, people not only worry about safety problems but also need high-efficiency service provided by apartments.
As some universities resume the fall semester, more and more college student apartments have experienced serious virus transmission incidents.
OUR SOLUTION
Check out our vision movie! The insights from our research indicate that we need to establish a platform between residents and apartment service providers, so we created an app that would help them do exactly that.
THE PROCESS
DISCOVER
Demographics
Survey
Interview
User Personas
User Journey
DEFINE
Problem Analysis
User Goals
Opportunities
How Might We
DEVELOP
Strategy
Sitemap
Wireframe
Vision Video
DELIVER
Visual language
Hi-Fi Prototype
Userbility Testing
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Define the Problem
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Analyze data from all Primary and secondary research
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Propose How Might We questions to narrow down a direction we would like to take this app
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Create user journey maps to help sculpt why the user would need this app.
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Create personas based on gathered info
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Affinitize data and create clusters
QUESTIONNAIRE
Some differences between respondents and roommates about cleanness habits differences may lead to minor friction between them.
Many people feel that cleanliness standard difference between their roommates and them.
During this pandemic, long periods of staying at home have left most people with negative emotions such as loneliness, depression, sadness, etc.
69% people live in shared apartment where they need to balance their life with roommates' life together.
Siqi Zhang, 25
The community's epidemic prevention measures in public areas are not in place
Users don't want to ruin the relationship with roommates, but still want a co-clean environment.
A graduate student in Film
Lives in shared apartment with two other people
The community's facilities need to be refurbished
Resident want to keep clean and convenient life with them, the service request process in his apartment not that convenient for him
Bradon Cole, 25
A graduate student in Fashion Design
Lived in a shared apartment with his friend
Melvis Zhang, 26
A graduate student in Visual Design
Lives in shared apartment with her classmates
Users didn't check email so frequently that she always neglect the information office send.
There are no local information access for the users.
Users lack of fully understanding of correct information, the main information sources are social media platforms and general official one are not so local that let them feel it happened nearby.
Stakeholders Interview
KevinTurner
Age: 24
Jobs: Student
Resident
Informed
Comfortable
Patience
Kevin was a graduate student who moved out of school apartment and moved to the Bowery that is a fancy apartment in the center of downtown. He live with other two roommates, he really wants to use all facilities as usual but more safe and clean.
Bio
I hope I can stay healthy and have a good mood during the outbreak and when I go to fitness community public spaces are safe enough.
Needs
He wants to know about infections cases nearby
During the covid-situation, he still wants to communicate and play with friends as usual, and keep roommates relationship good.
He wants gyms like public spaces safe enough so that he can use it in freedom.
Painpoints
He doesn't have much motivation to strictly follow the guidelines for epidemic prevention.
The gym now still open but not many measures adopted to clean
He wants to live more convenient and easier life
Iris Zhou
Age: 22
Jobs: Student
Resident
Comfortable
Informed
Patience
Bio
Eris is a graduate student at SCAD who lives in the Walden with other two people. She feels worry about the clean level since she has different clean standards with her two roommates, and she really wants to keep a safe and convenient life in her apartment living time.
Needs
She hoped her roommate would take clean stuffseriously enough.
She wants a more streamlined apartment payment process to save time
She wants an accurate set of standards for clean environments
Painpoints
She doesn’t have the good communication way to build consensus.
Her roommates didn’t have the same cleaning guidelines as her.
She doesn’t have access to know the news or cases happened in community nearby as soon as possible
I wish my community to provide a safety place for me to live under pandemic circumstances.
She feels so troublesome when she needs to email again and again for issues happened in apartment
Apartment Administrator
Mark Sahlmann
Age: 32
Jobs: Apartment manager
Informed
Worries
Busy
Bio
Mark is a manager responsible for planning, organizing and coordinating community service.
Office room and other public areas in the community have reopened after being closed for COVID-19. Some residents concern about virus in gym, swimming pool and other public area, the apartment offered daily clean services now.
We want a better system to help us to reduce management pressure for pandemic prevention measures
Needs
If the community can effectively control the number of people in the public area, the community will be safer.
He wants residents to pay attention to his announcement related.
He hopes that the community will become safer and residents feel satisfied so that attract more people to live there.
Painpoints
He wants residents to receive correct information about the epidemic, so they can believe they live in a safe community.
He feels so busy with sending emails and manage tons of requirements
He thinks the current management and communication costs too high
We condensed our data points into twelve How might we’s. Four main HMW are shown below. These data points helped us develop our design ideas and the overarching display of the user’s voice. From our design framework came all of our design choices and solutions
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SERVICE TOUCHPOINT
COSAFE delivers its services through a multitude of physical and digital channels.
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Facility Scan area: An scan-area touchpoint that facilitates a variety of user needs including: scan the residents' identification QR code, account or profile information, etc.
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COSAFE App: The COSAFE Mobile Application allows users to book the gym time slot, access facilities room, change account/profile setting, among other user's needs.
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Website: COSAFE’s website allows for users to finish the quick move-in process, access living permission code, change account/profile settings and schedule appointments at the community center. Also file a maintenance report and receive assistance with service issues.
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Apartment Call Center/ Web Chat: Serves users requires for service recovery and assists with maintenance and move-in/move-out process.
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STAKEHOLDER MAP
COSAFE has multiple different stakeholders, including core stakeholder- our residents, and direct stakeholders such as office staff and administration managers.
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SERVICE BLUEPRINT
COSAFE provide the core service for helping residents to make appointment with any facilities they want to use, getting the contactless maintenance service request.
Click to enlarge image👆
PROTOTYPE
For the first rounds, we made five high-fidelity paper prototypes. The goal was to get feedback on the prototyping. We recruited 12 people to test our prototype.
Click to enlarge image👆
Click to enlarge image👆
For the second rounds, we deliver our mvp prototype to put into usability testing. Using Wizard of Oz method, we recruited another 13 potential users to test our tasks.
Task 1. Schedule a time slot for fitness room
60%
User control & Freedom
45%
Visibility of system status
Task 2. Request a maintenance
57%
Match between system & the real world
From Task1 and Task2, we found that the main problem is about ‘service' and labeling system. We need to make changes in this area, so that the categories are more detailed and the label is not misleading. Secondly, we need to further clarify the "entry points" where users have difficulty finding the features they need, and present them to users in a clear, guided manner.
People also feel it's hard to request button to make a request, since the request button is located too down.
Project Reflection
In this project, I co-created with three designers together and after conducting research, our team summarized the insights and found many design opportunities, and considered that the community security app will involve both users and administrators, so we designed the app for different users under the same system.
At the same time, due to the expansion of our target users, we have also done more in-depth research to ensure that there will be no problems with our design. In order to make our users more willing to use our app, we have joined the incentive mechanism, and we envisage that reward provider can work with local stores to give users a more secure experience while at the same time reviving the local economy.
We did Business Origami together 👆