Campus Canvas

Helping to reduce student burn-out and powering social & mental wellbeing by facilitating productive breaks using creative self-expression.

OVERVIEW

For the User Experience Design Studio (DECO2014) we researched, ideated and designed a playful experience to implement in a public space using the brief, "Playful Cities". The design had to include digital, spatial and physical components to engage the user whilst addressing a problem present within that space.

Our team decided to focus on learning spaces at University campuses with students as our target users. By engaging thoroughly in design thinking, our solution aims to improve the emotional and social well-being and experience of students when on campus.

ROLE

User Researcher, UX Designer

TEAM MEMBERS

Purvi Bothra + 2 Team Members

DURATION

Feb - May 2023, 13 weeks

ACHIEVEMENTS

Highest in the cohort for mid-fidelity prototype & process presentation.

⭐️ Click to view accolade

💡 Solution

A collaborative digital & physical art mural located across campus, for students to contribute by creatively interpreting a weekly prompt whilst waiting for class or when requiring a study break.

Student-chosen fun weekly drawing prompts for all students to participate.

Drawing tablets are situated across different spaces on campus, including learning spaces, for students to contribute to a collaborative art mural. Students can take a rejuvenating study break by drawing according to the prompt after logging in with University credentials.

Engaging in therapeutic drawings individually or with friends during study breaks.

Users can embrace escapism from University stress through self-expression, where they can utilise various tools to creatively interpret the drawing prompt. A timer of 10 minutes ensures users can get an adequate, relaxing break without distracting themselves from their work.

Encouraging students to participate in friendly competition through weekly voting.

After drawing, users are encouraged to vote for their favourite drawings of the week from students to emphasise community building and social well-being. Students are also incentivised to contribute to the community mural by submitting quality drawings weekly.

Reinforcing ethical conduct through warnings & student accountability.

To promote cultural & social harmony, regulations are put in place to mitigate students submitting offensive or derogatory drawings. This includes a warning requiring users to confirm they will face repercussions for such decisions, careful monitoring & a feature to report drawings users see on the mural..

Giving students creative autonomy during breaks & ways to remember their Uni experience.

Students can submit a prompt request to provide students with agency and creativity for their drawing preferences, maximising student involvement. Students are also able to view, save and share their previous Campus Canvas submissions, to serve as valuable and positive memories of their university experience,.

Enhancing the campus environment by projecting Individual drawings onto collective, digital art murals across campus.

Once students submit their artwork, it is immediately added to a mural located on campus depending on where they submitted their drawing. This functions using a projector for students to positively view the campus environment to & from classes.

Prototype Link

📌 The Brief

The convergence of "play" and public spaces is an emerging subject with numerous advantages for well-being. Yet, incorporating play beyond play-centric spaces such has been neglected in city design and planning. These spaces are often isolated and cater to specific age groups or circumstances.

How might we encourage human-centred play within public spaces to enhance physical, emotional, and/or mental wellbeing, and reinforce ways to interact and connect socially?

Discovery

Our team unpacked the brief by researching into an area that interested us most: University Campuses & its impact on student well-being.

🌳 Impact of environment

Different campus environments have different impacts on student emotions: natural environments helped reduce fatigue, whereas modernised internal spaces increased work productivity.

👥 The Action Bias Theory

Establishes the idea of toxic productivity culture emulated by learning spaces:

Tendency to favour action over inaction by believing this will enable progress, and is usually influenced by anxiety.

👥 Poor mental well-being of students

83%

Of University students lacked energy & motivation
(Headspace, 2017)

💡 Learnings: Due to the unique attributes of the brief and our team's approach of looking into the campus environment, it was initially difficult to find recent or relevant sources that were reliable to draw insight. It was more useful to research broadly into related areas of well-being, play and University students, and making connections ourselves instead of trying to find specific answers without centring our research yet.

Research Approach

However, there is minimal research focused on the interaction between students and learning environments.

Research objective & research questions mindmap.

Research Methods

We triangulated our research to observe & analyse the experiences of students in learning spaces.

💻 Explorative Questionnaire

37 F, 23 M | aged 17-23

60 participants

A survey was used to gain a broad understanding and statistical significance of the problem area, to see what (if any) problems students encounter utilising learning spaces.

Snippet of survey questions

🗣 Semi-structured user interviews

7 Different Faculties | 5F, 3M

8 students

Interviews helped us gain an in-depth understanding of the motivations behind user behaviour and emotion when utilising these spaces, as well as any issues faced.

Snippet of interview transcripts

👀 Contextual Observations

6 Hours of Observation

8 Learning spaces

Campuses around the University of Sydney were observed to Identify common user behaviour and how they utilise or interact with learning spaces around campus

Observation images & findings.

💡 Learnings: Balancing both attitudinal and behaviour research methods, such as understanding students' needs in-depth through interviews and observing their interactions in the researched environment helped us gain a clearer picture of needs and pain points. In the future, I would complement observations with mapping space to understand how students use and navigate learning spaces, and interview more students to explore unique experiences and attitudes.

Data Synthesis

We found that, at times, there were discrepancies between what students would say against their behaviour or thoughts.

To ensure our research data truly reflected the underlying needs of students to address core issues or problems prevalent within learning spaces, empathy maps were used to identify further insights if we could isolate what was said against students' behaviour, thoughts, and emotions. This not only helped identify collective concerns, but helped validate data.

User Empathy Maps

💡 Learnings: From using an empathy map to better understand users' motivations and frustrations, I found it revealed inconsistencies that our team would have overlooked if not for carefully analysing responses. It helped me realise that sometimes participants may not be consciously honest in the environment of research, so it is the researcher's responsibility to ensure data is accurate.

Bottom-up affinity diagram to synthesise & categorise key research findings,

Key Insights

After refining and validating our interpretation of users' statements through the empathy maps, the qualitative research data was further synthesised and categorised into an affinity map. Using bottom-up analysis helped us categorise our learnings from interviews and observations, and draw key insights and student pain points accordingly.

Productive pressure

Students feel pressured to be productive due to the "serious" atmosphere and abundance of seating areas and desks around learning spaces.

“[When arriving early for class] Even If I didn't have anything [assessments] coming up, I would just open up my laptop and just go through class material.”- Palvi, Ba. Data Engineering

- 77% of students do not feel well-rested or satisfied between classes

- Students observed either observed studying on desks or having phone in hand

Preferring simpler destressing methods

Students find University well-being resources too formal and uninviting, thus are more inclined to use more simple coping methods to manage stress.

“it [University mental health programs] can get a bit too extreme. I'd rather just play games and watch shows and just relax my brain." - Tim, B. Education

- 73% of students never utilise University mental well-being aid or resources, preferring to listen to music, talk to a friend or use games or external entertainment.

Intimidated by social interaction

Students feel intimidated to directly engage with new people around learning spaces.

“When it’s a new class at the beginning of the year or semester and I don’t really know people, especially if my friend isn’t in that class. I feel a bit… awkward?” - Jessica, B. Arts

- 43% of students go on their phone between classes, preferring to be alone.

Minimal rest value

Students find no entertainment or rest value in areas around learning spaces other than offering seating areas or when with company.

“There’s literally nothing you can do outside of the rooms in older buildings. It’s just like corridors and hallways” - Paul, B. Business

- 44% of students are open to interacting with other cultures in Australia.

💡 The Opportunity

Learning spaces on campus currently influence aspects of stress and apathy among students, and contributes to hindering students' emotional and social well-being through the need to be productive,

How might we reduce the stress students associate with being on campus & help them feel rested and positively connected with the campus community?

Defining Users

The anxious academics and the laid-back but guilty socialites defined some of our key users to cater to.

Our team developed two diverse personas to account for the different types of students our experience design would cater to, helping us ruminate how diverse needs may be met with one simple solution.

Meet Lea

2nd Yr Business

A driven but anxious student who fears her focus on academics may have her missing out on social connection.

Motivations: Incentive, productivity, recognition, efficiency
Frustrations: inconveniences, large workloads
‍

“[About learning spaces] for 80-90% of the time, It's a space to be focused and productive, like at the library."

Meet Marvin

4th Year Data Science

A highly social and creative student who feels guilty for resting during stressful periods of semester.

Motivations: Competition, creativity, rest, social connection
Frustrations: Burn-out, awkward interactions
‍

“I have a pretty positive energy towards Uni... but when things pile up and get stressful, I struggle with how and when to take breaks."

💡 Learnings: Through creating representative personas, we found that it is more valuable to focus on relevant attributes rather than include persona information irrelevant to the problem space. This includes avoiding vague ratings.

UX Map

Through the current user journey, pain points lied in the demotivations to get to class & the relief when students can flee a stress-induced environment.

We used a UX map to consolidate and visualise our key insights in the context of current experiences users go through in the periods leading up to class. We found that the pain points were prevalent in the moments before a class starts and when students wait without company, ultimately feeling relieved to leave the space as soon as classes are over.

💡 Learnings: The journey map helped our team understand how our insights and pain points actually represented itself in a real context, enabling us to better empathise with user needs. In the future, I would focus on the key moments where pain points are encountered rather than include superfluous details that may take away from the significant insights.

User Experience Map.

Ideation

We used mind-mapping & storyboards to ideate a solution that alleviated the stresses induced by learning spaces.

To brainstorm a wide range of potential design concepts, we used mind-mapping as a quick and effective way to externalise our ideas. The minimal deliberation on these ideas helped us utilise the full strength of our creativity before scoping down. We were able to organise 3 approaches to the problem: creative and interactive rest, gamifying productivity, and play and rest stations.

Ideation Mind-map.

3 solutions stood out to us, and we imagined them within the context of learning spaces around campus.

Collaborative Art Therapy Storyboard.

Idea 1

Art Breather: Collaborative Art Therapy

This concept focuses on a rest & rejuvenating activity for students waiting for a class or wanting to take a brea. They can contribute to an art mural using their devices under a time limit for a fun break.

Gamified Productivity App

Idea 2

Gamified Productivity App

An app encouraging students to be productive whilst implementing recreation through gaming & competition, offering a motive for balanced productivity.

Strengths: Offering students incentive to be productive whilst implementing breaks

Weaknesses: Extrinsic motivation, competition may influence students to de-prioritise their studies.

Music Steps Storyboard.

Idea 3

Campus Music Steps

Encouraging social interactions among students when arriving or leaving classes, who collaboratively create music using light-up auditory steps on entrances and exits of campus buildings.

Strengths: Collaborative nature can generate positive social interaction, stress-reliever

Weaknesses: May disturb other students, can only be effective when there is co-ordination

💡 Learnings: Brainstorming through mind-mapping was a quick and efficient way to explore a range of ideas, however after some time, our ideas plateaued in the uniqueness and creativity. Complementing this ideation technique with another, such as reverse thinking, may help us explore more diverse ideas. Storyboarding our top 3 ideas was also beneficial in enabling students to visualise the solution in context instead of sharing lo-fi sketches that are difficult to picture in use.

Concept Selection: Decision Matrix

After assessing each idea against users' needs, Campus Canvas showed the strongest results to help solve the problem.

Our team used Pugh's concept Decision Matrix to assess each idea against criteria defined by users' needs from research, helping us narrow down to the most viable and effective solution. We found that although the gamified productivity app was collaborative and motivate students, it could be a cause of distraction and promote addiction. Music steps would prompt engagement, but may have issues in hindering accessibility.

Concept Decision Matrix.

Concept Tests

Through concept tests, we found that students had a positive response to the design idea.

Using a Lo-fi sketch which showcased the design's key features and operational aspects, our team tested Campus Canvas with 10 students, and were pleased to see that the experience design was something users would be interested in using frequently. It was also an opportunity to receive early feedback before advancing to the mid-fidelity prototype, including how to address ethical concerns (inappropriate drawings) and imposing limits (i.e. time or freqency of drawings to prevent distraction).

Campus Canvas Lo-Fi Sketch.

💡 Learnings: Despite conducting a decision matrix, we found it highly useful and reassuring to run formal concept tests with students to identify if they would be interested to use the design, to avoid investing time into an ineffective solution. I believe involving users as much and as early as possible throughout the design process can help reveal assumptions, improve design decisions and save time and effort.

Mid-Fidelity Prototyping

Our team combined physical and digital prototyping to run our official usability tests.

The initial feedback gained from users was applied and translated into our next iteration. This mid-fidelity prototype considered the digital aspects of our experience design through wireframes, as well physical prototyping techniques and materials. The wireframes for the digital component (drawing tablet) applied feedback such as to improve the current design, considering risk factors and allowing students autonomy and flexibility by drawing or voting at anytime.

💡 Learnings: Creating a prototype for a design with both digital and physical components was a new and interesting experience, and I learned that designing a paradigm of the real experience using accessible & cheap resources is a useful technique to garner feedback early, before investing time & effort into technical sources for realism.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype (Wireframes & Physical Prototype)

User Flow

We created a user flow to optimise a testing protocol to garner the most feedback across key features.

We developed a user flow for the digital component of the design (the drawing tablets), which would help us organise our wireframes in accordance to the significant tasks and user goals we wanted to test for usability.

Ideation Mind-map.

💡 Learnings: Creating a user flow of the most important/main features of our prototype was useful in ensuring usability testing can be focused. We realised there was no point in testing features beyond the MVP, which may hinder the feedback we receive for the main purpose of the design. This also helped us create cohesive use-case scenarios following this user flow to situate users in the context.

User Testing

The mid-fidelity prototype of Campus Canvas received an SUS Score of 90, and we iterated on feedback concerning ethical factors & student distraction.

To ensure a comprehensive evaluation before proceeding with the hi-fidelity mockup, our team meticulously devised a user-testing protocol with 10 users. We wanted to determine the effectiveness and seamless integration of the experience design, while also gauging its ability to engage students whilst on campus. Users were provided with a use-case scenario and tasks to submit a drawing, and vote for their favourite drawings. The evaluative methods used were think aloud, observations, short interviews and an SUS survey.

Significant Iterations

Stronger visual hierarchy to inform users of ethical conduct

Effectiveness issue

During testing, we observed that many users would skim over the warning and instinctively proceeded to achieve their goals. We reinforced the significance of the warning in ensuring ethical behaviour through iterating the visual hierarchy and CTA. We also added a feature for users to report inappropriate submissions themselves.

Users observed to skim over warning, proceeded within 5 seconds

Minimising student distraction by imposing time limitations

Utility, effectiveness issue

Over concerns of the design disrupting students' focus, especially within learning spaces, our team decided to implement features such as a time restriction & limit of only 1 submission per prompt per student. These limitations can ensure the design is effective without negative consequences.

"Students might get distracted by it, and not do their work."

Reminding users where they can find their displayed artwork

Memorability, learnability issue

Once testers finished and submitted their drawings, we noticed that they were slightly confused as to where and how to see their drawing projected on a mural. We decided to remind users twice as to the location of their mural (dependent on which tablet they sued to submit drawings) to accentuate this information.

"The 'sync calendar' button was hard to find at first. I didn't know i had to scroll." "I didn't know whether the syncing was successful."

Ensuring as many students can participate as possible

Effectiveness issue

Originally, our team thought to alternate prompts chosen by students per day. However, users raised issues with not as many students could participate for each prompt if they only attended uni on selective days. We changed this to weekly prompts to provide a larger timespan for students to submit their drawings.

"There's a chance if, for example, the user doesn't have uni one day but wants to participate. I feel like having a weekly prompt might be better."

💡 Learnings: Through user testing, our protocol involved having one team member make notes based on testers' think-aloud and observations. In the future, recording testing sessions and transcribing think-aloud transcripts would help reveal usability issues or assumptions in hindsight that may have been missed in live testing.

High-Fidelity Prototype

When iterating our Hi-Fidelity prototype, we referenced retro gaming to inform visual design choices & create a nostalgic experience for students.

To reinforce the playfulness and rejuvenating purpose of the design for users, our team designed mood-boards to develop a design aesthetic that was relevant to the purpose, ensuring it does not hinder its functionality but enhance it.

💡 Learnings: As we aimed to infuse elements of nostalgia and positivity into our playful experience design, we were inspired by the monospaced typography and bold colours of arcade or retro games. However, it is significant that such visual design choices do not hinder accessibility, such as colour contrast and legibility.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype (Wireframes & Physical Prototype)

Final Testing

Campus Canvas received a final SUS score of 91.25, with students appreciating its simplicity and user-friendliness: even to those who didn't consider themselves 'artistic'.

After completing our final user testing and finalising iterations to the visual design and clarifying CTAs, we found that even individuals who were not inclined towards drawing expressed their enthusiasm for the design, recognising it as a way to invigorate study breaks or pass time before classes. By fostering a sense of community and nurturing creativity among students, our design not only contributes to their overall well-being whilst on campus, but also fosters healthy breaks that augment long-term productivity.

“I loved the whole process. It’s simple but still something unique that I haven’t seen or thought about whilst on Campus. Weekly drawings seem super easy and fun.”

- Jeff, B. Interaction Design

“I loved seeing other peoples’ artworks come together through the moving art mural. I don't usually draw but it would be fun to do before classes.”

- Mari, B. Interaction Design

Campus Canvas Poster.

Success Metrics

Student participation rates & student satisfaction would be key success metrics for Campus Canvas.

The overall positive response from students towards the experience design influenced our team to look into future prospects, if Campus Canvas was implemented within Universities. The following key success metrics would be used to measure the design's impact and value to students within learning spaces:

Success Metrics

Retention Rate of Student Drawings

- Monitor number of returning students, who consistently submit drawings and/or votes after 1 week, 1 month, 1 semester & 1 year
- Will indicate longevity & sustainability of experience design to continue to de-stress students & offer a playful initiative.

Student Conversion & Participation Rates

- Percentage (%) of students on campus at a given period of time, who have logged into tablets but have also submitted a drawing weekly or voted, to measure
- Indicate how many students show initial interest in the experience design, and are converted to participate.

Student Satisfaction Score

- Use CPS or NPS (Net Promoter Score) to gain customer feedback on effectiveness/attitudes towards experience design, and if they would recommend it to other students.
- Identify positive changes in students' wellbeing and emotions when on campus.

Campus Canvas Video Prototype

Pain Points vs Solution

How Campus Canvas addresses the problem:

Instead of creating an incentive to distract students, Campus Canvas fosters a sense of community and nurtures creativity, contributing to enhancing student well-being but also reinforcing healthy breaks that augment long-term productivity.

Retrospection

Key learnings I made along the way

💗 Be open to different opinions

Working in a team consisting of different designers helped me become more comfortable with debating with different ideas, and accepting new ways of thinking. Taking into account what will be best for the user should always take priority against personal opinion and pride, which is how our team was able to come to more agreements.

👀 Pay attention to details but don't miss the bigger picture

For a design with multiple components, balancing attention to detail with designing something cohesive and well-integrated was significant for this brief, as we had to take into account how the physical aspects could connect with the digital components for a seamless user experience.