PhD Visit Day App
Date: March 2023 - May 2023
Tags: user interviews, affinity diagramming, card sorting, persona creation, wireframing, app design, app development, task scenarios, user testing, rapid design, WCAG
App: PhD Visit Day App
Cornell University hosts an Information Science PhD Visit Day for prospective PhD candidates to visit campus and learn more about the PhD program, research and more. Cornell wants to create an app for prospective candidates to ease their Visit Day experience. I worked in a team of five undergraduate designer/developers to tackle this challenge.
Final Design
Our final design has four main views: home, itinerary, reimbursement, and directory. These four views are able to answer our users’ four main goals, which were further specified through task scenarios.
Users
Our intended audience are prospective PhD students who are interested in the Information Science (IS) program at Cornell University and want to participate in PhD Visit Day.
We conducted five semi-structured interviews to gather information about the PhD Visit Day from participants’ perspectives and consolidated key points from each user interview by creating an affinity diagram to identify common themes
User Interviews
Their main reasons for attending Visit Day were to:
learn more about the PhD program
meet potential advisors, current PhD students, and other prospective students
tour campus and the labs where they might work
The majority of interviewees, especially those whose Visit Days were online, felt a lack of opportunities to socialize and wished they were able to chat more with fellow prospective students and current students
Many identified their favorite aspect of Visit Day as being able to talk 1-on-1 with faculty or current students
Users seem indifferent to the way itineraries are sent through email with various links for different online meetings and scheduling
User Goals
Prospective IS PhD students:
Want to have opportunities to meet and talk to other prospective PhD students and current students who are interested in similar research areas
Want to learn more about Cornell’s IS PhD program, research areas, and professors, as well as its campuses and facilities
Want to easily locate information on event descriptions, locations, and logistics of their Visit Day itinerary
Want easy access to reimbursement for their PhD Visit Day expenses
Persona
Sarah is a prospective PhD student who is searching for a university program that matches her research interests.
Her most important considerations when it comes to choosing a PhD program are an advisor with matching research interests, funding, and good relationships between PhD students and faculty in the department.
She wants to attend the PhD Visit Day to learn more about Cornell’s program and hopes to be able to talk to academic cohort, from faculty to current PhDs to other prospective students.
Cornell’s Visit Day will be the first she attends, so she’s not sure what to expect and how to go about her schedule and finding people to talk to. Sarah’s goal is to have an informative experience that will help inform her final decision.
Task Scenarios
Goal 1: Prospective PhD students are interested in social opportunities so they can meet and talk to other prospective students, PhD student volunteers, and faculty in similar fields.
Task Scenario 1: Sarah is a prospective PhD student planning to attend Cornell’s InfoSci PhD Visit Day. She wants to get in contact with some current PhD students to discuss research opportunities. Her prospective advisor recommended her to speak to a student named Henry Waver, so she uses the Visit Day app to find his contact information.
Goal 2: They want to learn more about Cornell’s campus as well as more about its labs, research and professors.
Task Scenario 2: Sarah is a prospective PhD student who is looking to do research at a university. Sarah has never been to Cornell University, but is planning to attend Cornell’s Information Science PhD Visit Day and wants to explore what types of research are available. Sarah finds the names and locations of the labs she is scheduled to tour.
Goal 3: Users want to easily locate information on event descriptions, locations, and logistics of their Visit Day itinerary.
Task Scenario 3: Sarah is a prospective PhD student who is looking to do research in InfoSci at Cornell University. She is attending the InfoSci Visit Day and needs to know her schedule during her time at Cornell. Sarah is especially interested in doing research with Phoebe Sengers, and uses the Visit Day app to check when she is meeting with her 1-on-1.
Goal 4: Users want easy access to reimbursement for their PhD Visit Day expenses.
Task Scenario 4: Sarah is a prospective PhD student attending PhD Visit Day and is traveling from San Francisco, California via airplane. She bought her airplane ticket for $500 on April 27 and wants to be reimbursed for it. She adds the expense details to her expenses list on the app.
Design
First iteration
Second iteration
Home View
The first page the user will see when they open the app. It contains key information: the next event on their itinerary, reimbursement information, and their favorite contacts. Each section contains a link that leads to more details.
Itinerary View
User’s full schedule for the visit days, organized by day. Each event is represented by a card showing the event name, time, and location; each card can be clicked to view details for that event.
Reimbursement View
Allows the user to track expenses to be reimbursed. They can add each expense (e.g. plane ticket), and the app will calculate their running total. This allows the user to easily keep track of expenses to be reimbursed.
Directory View
This is how users communicate with professors that they’re interested in or deal with their field of interest. We decided that more filters were needed, such as faculty and advisors in order for users to more quickly find what they needed.
Development
We developed a prototype using BootstrapVue and Visual Studio Code to collaborate via Github and were able to publish a working mobile Progressive Web App
User Testing
User testing revealed that our app is overall clear, self-explanatory, and easy to navigate. Users all had little to no trouble successfully completing all of the tasks, without much hesitation as they navigated the app to accomplish their goals. They were able to effectively move through the itinerary to find event and meeting details (tasks 2 and 3), navigate the directory and its contacts for more detail (task 1), and add an expense to their reimbursement total (task 4).
We did discover a few minor design and feature issues that could be improved to create a smoother user experience. Some users had issues identifying the purpose of each icon in the app’s bottom navigation bar and guessed what they thought they were (e.g. “I think this calendar icon is the schedule”). This shows that our navigation bar icons may not be clear enough in communicating the purpose of each page. To address this issue, we can modify the design to always have text labels visible for each item (“Home,” “Itinerary,” “Reimbursement,” and “Directory”) rather than only having icons with labels visible when selected. Additionally, some users gave feedback on styling and functionality improvements. Throughout the app, our styling could be more uniform to give the app a more cohesive feel. In the directory page, there is a small bug in the search functionality where the results simply show/hide in the same position, so users who used the search bar to find Henry Waver had to scroll to see the “Henry Waver” result rather than simply seeing the result at the top (Task 1). Users also suggested adding additional functionality and information such as connecting to Google maps for event locations, allowing users to take notes on each event, and presenting the contact information of the organizer for each event.
The results from user testing have shown that our app effectively allows users to accomplish their goals, with only a few minor revisions to design and functionality necessary to create an even better experience.