Creating an app for college students: Purdue Apartments
Timeline:
August 2023
Role:
Designer
Project Type:
Solo Passion Project
Tools:
Figma
Adobe Photoshop
Defining the problem
College students face a significant challenge when it comes to securing apartments and roommates. This is primarily due to the expectation that students must commit to leases as early as two months into their college journey. During this crucial period, incoming students are still in the process of adapting to their class schedules and building social connections. Adding to the complexity, there is currently no centralized platform that consolidates information on all available campus apartments. Therefore, students struggle to identify suitable apartments that align with their preferences and requirements.
With this objective in mind, I formulated the following statement to help guide my design process:
How might we design a platform for college students to easily find the best-fit apartment and roommates for them during the most crucial stage of their college journey?
User Research
I virtually interviewed 11 Purdue University students and surveyed over 100 Purdue University students by posting the survey on social media platforms such as (Instagram, Brightspace Purdue course pages, Slack workspaces, Group Me chats, and Facebook groups)
KEY INSIGHTS:
Users struggle to find roommates so early in their college journey
Users are unaware of what apartments exist at Purdue or which ones are available
Users want there to be bolder and bigger buttons for posting and submitting something on the app at any time
Many users were unaware of the different Purdue app resources available and mentioned that they would use it daily if they were informed about it
Users would benefit from having each apartment’s contact information attached to their apartment page on the app
85.7%
of the students who filled out the survey form believe that they would benefit from having a platform that has access to all of the apartments at Purdue as well as students at Purdue who are searching for roommates
To synthesize all of the user research, I created an affinity map to better organize the key insights that I learned regarding feedback given for the layout and navigation of the app.
Ideation
Affinity Mapping
I created a diagram by brainstorming the different ways I could make the app easier to navigate and make the process of finding roommates and an apartment simpler for college students at Purdue by organizing the given interviewed user’s feedback and grouping my ideas that consisted of functionality needs, management/navigation, aesthetics/colors, accessibility, and recovery.
User Personas
I consolidated the insights into two main personas, with the primary persona being the most common user structure out of all of the users interviewed.
