UX Designer

11/2024 to 12/2024

Qualtrics, NotebookLM, Figma, Slack

Charles Meng

Allison Tanaka

Anita Rani

Himani Kumawat

Improved event communication

Fragmented communication creates challenges of staying informed about events and announcements. It comes at a cost.

This case study showcases our design process, key findings, and prototype ideas for a solution aimed at enhancing communication at the Silicon Valley Campus.

Context

We targeted an internal issue my colleagues and I faced. With my team, we directly communicated with students, faculty, and researchers, and conducted other extensive research, which informed our approach to the solution.

I collaborated with 3 other designers in a literature review, and surveys. Afterwards, I led the team in conceptualizing potential solutions—designing frameworks and prototypes, and creating the user testing protocols.

This was a 5-week endeavor, checking-in with various stakeholders (faculty, and students) for feedback and direction. ~1 week dedicated for design, 2 days for testing and 2 days in between for reviews/revisions.

Background

University of California, Santa Cruz’s second campus, the Silicon Valley Campus (SVC) comprises a dynamic hub of four main programs:

Despite its vibrant community, members had concerns of fragmented communication channels — creating a pattern where critical information (class announcements, social events, financial info.) gets buried, and programs miss opportunities to connect with each other.

Research

Given the scope of the project, and time constraints, we utilized cost-effective approaches to get the most outreach within the community.

Insights

Organizers are currently using 3-5 different platforms to broadcast events.

"It would be great if it was all in one place."

Slack and word-of-mouth were the most used platforms for announcements and discovery.

Through synthesis of various articles, and from our surveys, we came up with a set of communication guidelines.

Literature Lessons (Things to consider)

01 The desire for cultural exploration could be additional factors that directly or indirectly impact a student’s decision to attend a university event.

02 In events related to innovation, education, and training:

03 Consider distance learning students:

Data → Designs

Don't make an app. Leverage existing platforms.

Slack is the official communication channel at SVC, so what if there was a separate, internal channel displaying these events?

We explored different types of calendar view types (weekly/monthly), and event views to provide users with more flexibility with accessing information.

Usability Testing

We had students, and community managers test our working Mid-Fi prototype.

Testing involved a supervised observation of the participants actions, and patterns, combined with a think-aloud protocol.

After a total of 6 tests, we noticed some consistent behaviors and attitudes.

Slack Calendar felt too siloed!

Students and community managers felt that there was little differentiation between this and Google Calendar. What's the draw towards Slack Calendar?

At a high level, it is just another calendar app to onboard users to. Not very efficient.

Actionable Solutions

Connecting the Google Calendar integration to our Slack could aggregate the flow of communication.

However it is not available in our workspace, so we contacted our admins.

We also explored potential design implementations to provide more flexibility with this integration.

HiFi Explorations

Even though we scrapped the original solution, the insights were still helpful - it gave us ideas for features which we then implemented here.
For example:
- Different Calendar displays
- Event view details
- Filters and tags
- RSVP methods

Thank you!

In hindsight, it's easy to see that the first solution would obviously not work. Regardless of this, we figured out a new solution that leveraged the assets we created from the first. So at the end of the day, I'm glad it was one route we explored.

Improved event communication

Fragmented communication creates challenges of staying informed about events and announcements. It comes at a cost. This case study showcases our design process, key findings, and prototype ideas for a solution aimed at enhancing communication at the Silicon Valley Campus.

Context

We targeted an internal issue my colleagues and I faced. With my team, we directly communicated with students, faculty, and researchers, and conducted other extensive research, which informed our approach to the solution.

I collaborated with 3 other designers in a literature review, and surveys. Afterwards, I led the team in conceptualizing potential solutions—designing frameworks and prototypes, and creating the user testing protocols.

This was a 5-week endeavor, checking-in with various stakeholders (faculty, and students) for feedback and direction. ~1 week dedicated for design, 2 days for testing and 2 days in between for reviews/revisions.

Background

University of California, Santa Cruz’s second campus, the Silicon Valley Campus (SVC) comprises a dynamic hub of four main programs:

Human-Computer Interaction

Natural Language Processing

Games and Playable Media

Computational Media

Despite its vibrant community, members had concerns of fragmented communication channels — creating a pattern where critical information (class announcements, social events, financial info.) gets buried, and programs miss opportunities to connect with each other.

Research

Given the scope of the project, and time constraints, we utilized cost-effective approaches to get the most outreach within the community.

A survey meant for all user types at SVC, including students, researchers, professional, community managers and faculty.

Literature Review of relevant studies.

Learn behaviors around event engagement

Gauge satisfaction with current communication channels

Understand the importance of certain communication features

Insights

Organizers are currently using 3-5 different platforms to broadcast events.

"It would be great if it was all in one place."

Slack and word-of-mouth were the most used platforms for announcements and discovery.

Through synthesis of various articles, and from our surveys, we came up with a set of communication guidelines.

Literature Lessons (Things to consider)

01

The desire for cultural exploration could be additional factors that directly or indirectly impact a student’s decision to attend a university event.

02

In events related to innovation, education, and training:

Maintain effective communication with participants

Allocate sufficient and effortful preparation time

Facilitate communication, collaboration, and event documentation

03

Consider distance learning students:

Lots of coursework - can be difficult to maintain studies and manage communications.

Data → Designs

Don't make an app. Leverage existing platforms.

Slack is the official communication channel at SVC, so what if there was a separate, internal channel displaying these events?

We explored different types of calendar view types (weekly/monthly), and event views to provide users with more flexibility with accessing information.

Usability Testing

We had students, and community managers test our working Mid-Fi prototype.

Testing involved a supervised observation of the participants actions, and patterns, combined with a think-aloud protocol. After a total of 6 tests, we noticed some consistent behaviors and attitudes.

Slack Calendar felt too siloed!

Students and community managers felt that there was little differentiation between this and Google Calendar. What's the draw towards Slack Calendar?At a high level, it is just another calendar app to onboard users to. Not very efficient.

Many members at SVC use Google Calendar

Look into the Google Calendar Slack integration

Actionable Solutions

Connecting the Google Calendar integration to our Slack could aggregate the flow of communication. However it is not available in our workspace, so we contacted our admins.

We also explored potential design implementations to provide more flexibility with this integration.

HiFi Explorations

Even though we scrapped the original solution, the insights were still helpful - it gave us ideas for features which we then implemented here. For example:- Different Calendar displays- Event view details- Filters and tags- RSVP methods

Thank you!

Fragmented communication creates challenges of staying informed about events and announcements. It comes at a cost.

This case study showcases our design process, key findings, and prototype ideas for a solution aimed at enhancing communication at the Silicon Valley Campus.

Testing involved a supervised observation of the participants actions, and patterns, combined with a think-aloud protocol.

After a total of 6 tests, we noticed some consistent behaviors and attitudes.

Students and community managers felt that there was little differentiation between this and Google Calendar. What's the draw towards Slack Calendar?

At a high level, it is just another calendar app to onboard users to. Not very efficient.

Connecting the Google Calendar integration to our Slack could aggregate the flow of communication.

However it is not available in our workspace, so we contacted our admins.

Even though we scrapped the original solution, the insights were still helpful - it gave us ideas for features which we then implemented here.
For example:
- Different Calendar displays
- Event view details
- Filters and tags
- RSVP methods