University of Toronto Facility Maintenance app
1 Week
(Dec 2019)
Design Challenge
Researched, ideated, and designed
MVP design
Create a new system for the University of Toronto to report any facility maintenance or repair issues on campus.
A mobile app that will encourage students to instantly report building or equipment issues around campus and receive notification of the report status.
Three step set-up. Users are asked for system permissions in order to utilize app’s geotag and photo sharing features.
This will reduce the amount of content to fill out. The map is also interactive, enabling users to select nearby buildings visually.
The search bar will consist of a list of nearby buildings and recent searches.
This will help those who are receiving and taking actions on the issues identify the specific location and object.
There are six issue categories to choose from. The selection of floor number varies depending on the building height.
Once a report is submitted, users have the option to track the report. The status of each report can be viewed in the reports tab.
Once a reported issue reaches the state of being fixed, the user will receive 100 points. These points can be transferred to Tbucks or accumulated for other perks.
Implemented a design-thinking process to create a solution that would provide the best experience for University of Toronto students and alumni.
To better understand the situation, I looked at how students presently report campus facility issues.
A google survey was conducted with 31 respondents. Click here for Survey.
Based on my research, a mobile app was the most appropriate to tackle this problem. According to the respondents, the following features were deemed to be the most useful if reporting a campus facility issue is done through an app.
With the ideal features in mind, I sketched the first iteration of the app design.
This design focused on creating a simple and effortless experience for students to report issues with a step by step process.
From my sketches, I created high fidelity screens to conduct user tests via Figma to further validate and uncover any usability issues.
With 6 user testing participants I uncover three key points to improve upon my designs.
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One thing I regret not doing is testing in medium fidelity. This could've saved me a lot time when revising designs and may have helped me uncover more flaws in the user flow.
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From my experience completing this challenge, I'd like to define and write what success looks like from the start. While I had in mind what I wanted the outcome to be, I believe writing it out is better practise.
As this project was a design challenge, there are many things that could be further refined. Additional user testing could be conducted in person where users have to go through the actual experience of reporting a facility issue. More insights could be drawn from this exercise, such as information in regards to the ease of use in current environments, people's state of mind, and their opinions on the experience after reporting an issue. Furthermore, if the MVP were to be developed, a conversation around technical feasibility will be needed.
