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Handy
Creating fulfillment for college students through acts of spontaneous altruism
Ismail Habibi and Sam Miller
Background
prompt
finding fulfillment
team
two designers
purpose
final project for introductory course to UI/UX
timeframe
3 weeks
skills
UX Research
UI Design
deliverables
fully prototyped Figma app
We designed Handy, an app that allows students to gain a sense of fulfillment by assisting fellow students on campus with various tasks.
background
problem
opportunity
There is a disconnect between what people want to do in order to be fulfilled and what they actually do.
43.1%
of college students prioritize “becoming a community leader
26.1%
of college students volunteer
from Do Good Institute of UMD
Although challenging classes and clubs sometimes keep students engaged, a lack of visible purpose and importance to their work contributes to demotivation
and dissatisfaction.
Students enjoy encountering and overcoming challenges, but often do not see the point of much of the schoolwork they are doing. Many students find fulfillment by seeing their work make a positive difference in the world, which is not often an everyday experience.
How might we create an experience that helps college students find fulfillment by positively impacting others?
solution
An app that allows students to put in requests for help and to respond to requests from peers.
Feature Overview
SWIPE
to find a task!
A Tinder-style card swipe interface that encourages spontaneity and reduces in-app time by eliminating endless scroll.
Swiping right accepts the task, while swiping left displays a different task. Each task displays estimated task duration, required materials, due date, location, and general subject area.
READ
task overview
VARIETY
of locations!
tasks from a
SHARE PHOTOS
to the campus feed!
Once both users have confirmed the task’s completion, the app prompts them to take a commemorative photo. This photo can either be saved or shared to a campus feed.
The campus feed is accessible only when a user has either completed a task or has had their own task completed. The posts are anonymized, displaying only the commemorative photo, location, time, and request title.
REFLECT ON
the times you helped!
Through their profile page, users can access their help history, displayed in calendar format. Each day that they have given or received help is highlighted and marked by the commemorative photo (if one was taken). Selecting one of these dates displays a pop-up that includes the photo, the helper or requestee’s name, the task title and description, and the time the task was completed.
Solution
App Walkthrough
When creating a help request, users are asked to input relevant information. This includes a title, description, duration, due date, location, and required materials. In addition, users must also tag their request with one of the available categories, which will be displayed on the request card. Users are only allowed to select one tag, which encourages focused help requests.
Once the user has accepted a request, a map appears that displays the request location. Once the user has arrived at the location, they can check in. A similar process occurs for users who are requesting help. Once another user accepts their request, the requestee is also taken to the map screen, where they can see their helper’s location.
A chat feature becomes available once both users have checked in. This simple messaging interface allows users to coordinate with one another in order to begin working on the task. Once they have completed their task, both users must click on the “Finish Task” button on their respective screens to proceed.
The Process
empathize
define
ideate
prototype
test
Process
user interviews
empathy maps
persona
journey map
POV statements
how might we's
brainstorming
sketches
grayscales
user testing
revising features
empathize
User Interviews
We conducted interviews with our primary stakeholders: college students.
Our questions aimed to understand how they defined fulfillment as well as the ways that they both succeeded and failed to achieve it on campus. We organized the most informative responses into empathy maps to better analyze the information.
define
Persona
We created a persona based on our research to design around.
This persona reflected much of what we heard in user interviews; placing this persona at the basis of our process ensured a user-first experience
define
Journey Map
We tracked a typical day of our persona and highlighted pain points.
Once we identified areas of improvement, we brainstormed potential methods of alleviating those issues.
define
POV Statement
With the persona and journey map, we created a point of view statement.
This POV summarized our work of defining a user and allowed us to design more purposefully.
An unmotivated, unhappy college student needs to find things that make them happy and satisfied on campus in order to be fulfilled and feel accomplished.
ideate
How Might We's
We came up with a primary HMW to start to guide our brainstorming.
We initially wrote multiple of these statements to give us direction on the various solutions we could create to solve our primary issues. We decided on one to focus on.
How might we create an experience that helps college students find fulfillment by positively impacting others?
ideate
Brainstorm
We came up with a variety of different ideas, which we wrote onto digital sticky notes and placed onto a mural.
Our ideas encompassed a wide range of solutions, giving us much freedom on where we could take the app.
prototype
Sketches
Once we decided on a campus helper app, we sketched out some preliminary, low-fidelity screens on paper
Sketching on paper allowed us to visualize what the app could look like while also allowing us to easily make any changes.
prototype
Grayscales
We created and user tested a very low fidelity prototype of our app with all of the main features.
The process of designing and testing the grayscales gave us a much better sense of how the user would feel navigating our experience.
test
User Testing
We conducted extensive user testing.
The feedback we received from users trying out our grayscales was incredibly valuable. We learned what worked, such as the card swipe method, as well as what didn’t, such as the way the chat feature is displayed.
test
Revising Features
Every feature of our app went through multiple phases of iteration.
For example, we did not land on the Tinder-style card swipe immediately. Much iterating was done on how best to deliver the requests to the users.
The first idea was a simple endless scroll list of requests, but we soon realized that this may encourage users to infinite scroll for long periods of time without actually accepting any requests.
To remedy this, we considered having a limited number of requests on each page and having the user manually press a button to take them to the next screen of requests, but we decided this would not fully fix the issue – it discouraged endless scrolling but did not prevent it.
We then considered having only three to four requests on screen at a time and having the user press a button to shuffle them. However, this would not encourage spontaneity and would rather encourage users to shuffle continuously through their options
We also thought about a TikTok-style discrete scrolling method where each request would take up an entire screen and the user would swipe up and down through them. This also did not fix the issue -- it simply changed the way it was presented.
We finally settled on a Tinder swipe method in which users go through requests by swiping left or right. If the user swipes left, that request is removed from their feed and they cannot access it again. This encourages users to think about each request very carefully before making a decision, something that we want the users to do.
Next Steps
There are several things that could be added to the app, given more time.
We considered implementing each of these features, but decided that they were secondary to the more important aspects of the app that we focused on instead.
A help streak counter could encourage users to continue accepting requests, similar to a practice streak on Duolingo.
An accolades feature on feed posts could boost user motivation and signify a greater connection to the campus community. Other users would be able to react to social media feed posts with emojis to express their admiration for the helper.
A report feature for problematic users would be essential to keep the app safe and effective.
Proximity based request notifications to allow for even more spontaneous helping would be a method of expediting request responses.
A heatmap of common request locations could indicate where people typically require assistance. This could potentially contribute to a higher rate of helpfulness in general in these locations, even without the use of the app.
Takeaways
Takeaways
There was a lot of pressure surrounding this project, especially considering the quick turnaround of three weeks during final exam season. This made for a very stressful, but also very rewarding, experience. As we worked, we began to better understand what was necessary to add now and what could be added in later if time permitted. We also received very positive feedback from our stakeholders and user testers – many expressed interest in using this app if it ever became available.
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