UX / UI
Web
During the pandemic, the university needed a way for students and staff to safely find and use on-campus spaces while adhering to social distancing guidelines.
A real-time web application that allows users to search for campus spaces and view a RAG status of the busyness level, providing a clear, at-a-glance status to ensure safety and confidence.
To begin, I facilitated a series of requirements workshops with key stakeholders from student services, facilities management, and the engineering teams.
This was more than just a kick-off meeting; it was a deep dive to align on business objectives, understand the technical feasibility of a real-time solution, and identify critical knowledge gaps about our users. By getting everyone on the same page from day one, we were able to define a realistic and impactful project scope.
With the foundational knowledge in place, I orchestrated a three-day design sprint involving all core project stakeholders. The goal was to move past assumptions and rapidly generate a viable solution.
Through collaborative exercises, we empathised with our key users, students struggling to find safe study spots and staff managing the campus, and defined their ideal user journey. The sprint culminated in a validated user journey map and a prioritised backlog of user stories, providing a clear roadmap for the product team.
Following the sprint, I moved the concepts from a whiteboard to high-fidelity designs. To ensure the solution would truly work for our users, I set up a round of unmoderated user testing via a recruitment pool of students and staff. This process yielded invaluable qualitative feedback, helping us identify potential points of friction.
We discovered a key opportunity to improve the clarity of the RAG status system, particularly around what each colour meant for safety and risk, which allowed me to iterate and refine the final designs before development.
The real-time application was successfully built and launched on the university's main website, with a supporting communications campaign that informed the community of its availability.
The solution received high engagement and quickly became an essential tool. By empowering students and staff with actionable data, the university was able to maintain a safe, functional, and supportive on-campus environment throughout the pandemic.
Drop me a quick message to kick off the conversation, I'd love to explore how I can bring your product vision to life!