01. Project Details

Overveiw

WarriorRec is a mobile application created to provide University of Waterloo students with a functioning database regarding all fitness and athletics updates, including drop-in classes schedules and various pother information.

From a first look, it's clear that there was a disconnect between the applications purpose and the user it was built. The main focus of this case study was to ensure that the app highlighted the features that were the most important to students, while also ensuring that the the app was designed in a manner that made for easy use and navigation.

02. Research

Understanding The User

In order to get a better understanding of the problem, the first place to start was research in order to pinpoint what exactly needed fixing. Reaching out to Waterloo students of different backgrounds and ranging amounts of fitness integrated into their lifestyles.

MEet the user

James Silva

A fourth year Finance student at The University of Waterloo. He works out at the schools gym occasionally, but after fours years of university he still hears about various extracurricular taking place, that he didn't know were actually available.

An avid sports fan, he's a proud to be Waterloo student and would love to show his support to the varsity teams at their game, but he find is difficult keeping track of most teams schedules across various platforms.

USER Quotes

"It seems like every week I'm finding new extracurricular activities around campus that I wish I'd know about earlier."

"My schedule is so hectic, it seems impossible to integrate fitness into my day without any effective scheduling."

"I love the Waterloo varsity teams but it takes me 20 minutes to find any sort of updates on how my favourite teams are doing this season!"

USER Wishes

"I love the Waterloo varsity teams but it takes me 20 minutes to find any sort of updates on how my favourite teams are doing this season!"

Quantative Research

After building out the user persona that best exemplified the target user, it was time to quantify the assumptions I had about the original application in order to confirm which features were of utmost importance in the proposed solution. These were key takeaways from my surveys with students.

Students who stated that there were UW fitness services they didn't know were available.

Students who worked out at least once a week at non-UW facilities because they couldn't find schedule times.

Students didn't know that the University of Waterloo had and Athletics and Recreation application.

03. Define

Defining the problem

Based on preliminary research from students as well as my own run through of the existing app, it was clear that the problem here multi-tiered and required a re-work on multiple levels.

schedule management

The primary issues students had with the existing application was the lack of integrated schedule management to work around their school schedules. There was a need for a quick schedule management and booking features that easily integrated the existing LEARN system that UW used.

layout organization/User navigation

The secondary issues that presented itself came with the layout design. the app was designed as a grid of information for users to access in order to gain insights to UW's various fitness services, however by doing this it has resulted in a fragmented application that does not promote users to build natural flows within the app and navigate naturally.

In addition, the links to various content on the app leads in to individual browsers only worked to further amplify the fragmentation within the application. The new solution needed to address in order to ensure that users would desire to use the application more frequently.

04. IDeate

Developing solutions

It was clear that focusing on creating a solution that was able to create its own self-hosted library of information within the app and making sure that an effective schedule management system was integrated at the forefront of the new solution.

Initial Wireframes

The primary issues students had with the existing application was the lack of integrated schedule management to work around their school schedules. There was a need for a quick schedule management and booking features that easily integrated the existing LEARN system that UW used.

I wanted to focus on the issues entirely and as such aimed to to design wireframes for these new few features that could be integrated into the current solution.

The first step was developing a dashboard of sorts that provided users with a quick entry point into the application; this dashboard would give them. access to their schedule which can keep track of their booked fitness services and followed athletics services.

Additionally, a re-organization of the existing icons into specified sections (Athletics and Fitness) would allow users to. have more natural interactions and navigation between sections of the app, thus creating a more useable solution going forward.

05. Prototype

Visual identity

While The University of Waterloo has a pre-existing visual identity /branding, I felt it was necessary to create a visual identity that was better in line with the fitness aspect of the app.

The Prototype

The redesigned WarriorRec application aims to focus on the users while ensuring that they aren't missing out on all the fitness services that UW offers.

By introducing a scheduling tab at the forefront of the users entry and navigation in the app, users would now be able to manage their fitness bookings and interested drop-in services more efficiently and provide them with the ability to integrate effective use of UW fitness services around their school schedules.

Additionally, categorizing all of the old icons that existed on the home page of the old app into two major sections (Fitness and Athletics), I was able to create a self-sustaining library of informations that would provide better user experience for a suers as opposed to navigating to various webpages in the old solution.

06. REsults & reflection

Looking back

This project was a great chance to build out a full case study from research to ideation and prototyping. It was a great opportunity to work through each of these stages and develop skills that I can apply for future projects.

Looking back, I think that I would have spent more time to develop a fully functioning prototype to better illustrate the navigations and users flows that could be occurring by users. With a longer project duration, it might have been something to more effectively deliver the impact of the case study and proposed solution.