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Mixer -
For All, By All
Behind the Project
As a student-athlete, I have always felt like an outsider, absent from the rest of campus. Unable to sign up for campus events with an average of 30+ hour commitment to athletics, I redesign my university's current event sign-up space, Anchor Link. “Mixer” provides all students with a calendar to host events based on participants’ availability to increase the chances of participation.
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Project
Service Design
Web Re-Design
2023
Research
Students Have Difficulties Signing Up for Campus Events
This topic came from my personal experience as a student-athlete. With an average of 30+ hours of commitment, it becomes challenging for student-athletes to participate in events with other students. Aside from training and competition, the limited off time is often met with physical and mental fatigue and takes away motivation for other activities.
Not only does this occur to these groups of students, but most students have many commitments in organizations, research, jobs, and classes and find it difficult to attend all events.
Obstacles
Conflicting Schedule
Low Interest
Overcoming Obstacle
Who Have Difficulties Participating?
Off Campus Students
Live further away and may take more efforts to join
International Students
Have cultural differences and anxiety meeting new people in a new place
Student-Athletes
Have a vigorous schedule and are more involved in their teams
My Process to Increase Participation for Students
Research
Challenges
Analyze
Current Solutions
Ideation
Prototype
Design
Outcome Platform
Competitive Analysis
Product 1 When is Good
How does it work?
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Each participant select the time that work for them
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The software send all the results to event host and shows common availability
Analysis
Event host can overview participants
Participants have limited customization options
UI design is less intuitive and hard to operate
Product 2 Google Calendar
Analysis
Intuitive operation, easy to customize
Other’s time arrangements and availability are visibile
Once shared, there's loss of privacy
My Takeaways
To Keep
Shared Calendar
Group Edit
To Optimize
UI Design
Privacy Issues
What is Preventing Students from Attending Events?
Varying Schedules
Based on speaking with 9 students and events hosts on the reason for low attendance, they expressed that their schedules often differ significantly due to various commitments, making it challenging for their available times to align with events.
Interviews
To discover the underlying reasons behind students' reason for not attending I conducted 10 face-to-face interviews, asking them to share the difficulties with signing up for events.
From the interview with ten students—residing off-campus, student-athletes, or international students:
8 students expressed interest in participating in on-campus events if they align with their interests and schedules
"My schedule is inconsistent, and most of the time, events I am interested in don’t match my time. Through the years I stopped looking and going to events."
"I see no point scrolling through all these uninteresting and repetitive events."
Design Question
How might we redesign event participation to fit within students' time constraints while preserving their value and impact?
Solution: Give Ricky the ability to host events with highest participation with the help of shared calendars
Ricky Nakano
Frustrations
Year: Junior
Hometown: Fresno, CA (Kamakura, JPN)
Interests: Zoos, tea, baseball
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Wants to join different cultural events but none fits his student-athlete schedule
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The school does not have a tea-related organization
Weakness of current solution
Design Opportunity: Design what the current event sign up website Anchor Link fail to provide for users
What is the Gap Between the Current Solution and User Needs?
