top of page
phone_mockup.png

StudyPals

San José State University

Reserve a study room for your academic success!

Challenge

San José State University wants to provide dedicated spaces for students to focus on their academic studies. Design an experience for students, professors, and community members to reserve work desks/rooms in the library.

To understand the problem let's research and ideate.
Ideation.jpg
Highlights from the research:

  • Use automated reservation/appointment software to not distract staff from the projects that cannot be automated

  • Libraries have the opportunity to make use of their physical space in new and innovative ways

  • More rooms and hours reserved in the middle of the week

  • Rooms are most busy at  midterms and final exams

Who are our users?

  • Students

  • Professors

  • Members of the school community

Let’s focus on students as our primary audience.
Persona.jpg
Meet Sam!

Hi,

I'm a BA Graphic Design Student at San Jose State University. I care about my academic success and believe that education makes us better people.

I love my roommates, but sometimes it's impossible to find a quiet space to study. I always go to the library to study before exams.

What would the journey look like to book a study room?

Let's sketch!

User_Journey.png
User simple_flow.jpg
Now we can combine our research and ideation to create user flows.
Features:

  • Checking availability

  • Reserving the space

  • Reporting any issues

Constrains:

Workspace in the library is limited, so it is essential to make the space available to as many students as possible.

Solution:

  • Reservations should be created with a sjsu.edu email address 

  • Reservation cannot exceed two hours per day and three times per week

user flow.jpg
The most exciting part: prototyping!

I started with sketching, trying to synthesize what I've gathered so far.​

Prototype_Sketch.png

Report an issue

Reserve a study room

Cancel reservation

I sketched three user flows:

1) Reserve a study room

2) Cancel reservation

3) Report an issue​

​

Due to our constraints - limited space - we have to limit time reservations daily and weekly.

​

A student should be able to see the remaining time for the day/week.

For status visibility, let's use the time icon of an hourglass in different colors:

green - if a student still has time for a reservation

red - if a student already used all her/his time for the week.

​

If a student reserve a room but didn't show up?

We can use a three-digit code on the door to enter the room. If a student didn't come 15 minutes after his/her time reservation, it automatically cancels.

Next step: high-fidelity wireframes.

But first, I want to create a concise design system and check accessibility.

Design System.png

Now it will be faster and easier to create hi-fi wireframes.

Hi-Fi Flow.png
Flow 1 - Reserve a  study room

A student can explore all available time slots

Or a student can explore available rooms instead of slots

When a student chooses a preferred time and room, he/she can reserve it and set a reminder through the calendar

A student made a reservation, now he/she can: add to the calendar, get direction, report an issue, or cancel a reservation

After reservation, the reserved room will be displayed as a widget on the screen's top

Features:
Hi-Fi Flow.png

For status visibility, let's use an hourglass icon in different colors:

​

grey - if a student still has time for a reservation

​

red - if a student already used all her/his time for the week

Hi-Fi Flow.png

The reserved room will be displayed as a widget on the top of the screen

A student can click on the widget and see the details of the reservation.
To cancel, a student can click on the cancel button

After canceling, a student will direct to the time slots availability and see the cancelation notification

Flow 2 - Cancel a reservation of the study room
Flow 3 - Report an issue
Hi-Fi Flow.png

To report an issue, a student can click on the send icon at the bottom navigation

Or, if it's related to the room reservation, a student can click on the button Report an issue

A student can type the subject and description of the issue and send it

A student will be redirected to the homepage and receive a notification that his/her request has been sent

Final design and an interactive prototype
High Fidelity Screens (1).png
A link to the interactive prototype (Figma)
What would be the next steps?
1. User testing

I would love to test my assumption about the user flow of students who want to reserve a study room. In the testing, I would create simple tasks for the users, such as:

  • Could you find an available time slot in Clark Building?

  • Could you reserve a room at any location, but at 10:30 am today?

  • If you need to cancel your reservation, what steps in the app would you proceed with?

  • Suppose you are inside the room but could not charge your computer. What actions in the app can you try to solve or report your issue?

2. Features that can be incorporated

During the research, I learned that in many universities, students use study rooms. The constraints for the universities that space is limited. In my ​solution, I incorporated tome limitation for the students per day and per week.
Also, the problem may be when students book a room but didn't use it. So, it will be helpful to incorporate a feature to cancel reservations automatically if a student didn't show up. 

3. Measurements for the app evaluation 

I think to create metrics to measure the app's success. These metrics can be:

  • Task successful rate = success attempts/total attempts

  • Task competition Time

  • Average Completion Time

  • Average Time on Task

  • The satisfaction of the users after using the app (Survey, Score)

bottom of page