2024 DESIGN CASE CRACK WINNERS

Put together with 3 fellow student designers, I dove into this thrilling design competition to achieve yet another design experience. Join this design story as I not only unravel our challenges but our method to design pitching. This project will tell the story of how it all began, the complications and our victory over the competition.

What is a case crack?

A one-day design competition by SUEDE:

It's a collaborative process where everyone brings their ideas and expertise to the table. Together, we brainstorm, gather insights, and work on innovative solutions to find the best way forward. Finally, designs will be judged by a panel of Deloitte Digital designers, and a winner announced.

The Design Brief

Student life encompasses a diverse range of experiences, from academic pursuits to social interactions, and personal development. By gaining insights into these aspects of student life, designers can create simple digital products/ experiences that promote holistic wellbeing, foster academic success, and enhance the overall student experience.

How might we design for university students' diverse lifestyles, whilst promoting wellbeing and enhancing their overall experience?

Design process at a glance

Given the nature of the comp, our criteria to fulfil user research, and follow a design process, I divided up our day to loosely follow the double diamond structure. As organised as I wanted to be, I had to remain flexible and facilitate my team’s strengths and motivations too. We bent some A.I tools to our will in order to conclude on reasoning and interpretations of our research.

UX Research

To assess how first year students plan their course of study for their overall degree

While the design brief was close to home for all of us, we all agreed to deviate from the social wellbeing problem area and look into the design of admin and enrolment services our own university provides to hopefully give us a competitive edge.

Research Goal 1:

What are their expectations for their course of study

Research Goal 2:

What confusions and barriers they bump into when making course decisions

Research Goal 3:

How prepared do students feel about entering university?

Online Ethnography

Desktop
Research

Semi-structured
Interviews

Affinity
Diagram

User
Persona

Let me paint you a picture

Would you be able to plan the next 4 years of your $40,000 degree using this?

What we discovered:

New university student are forced to memorise potential units when browsing the view tab

Current layout is confusing and outdated table that doesn’t reflect degree planning

Inability to view selective units at all times, (too many interactions points!)

Insights

We analysed our research data using an affinity diagram. Figjam is our best friend when it comes to drawing and pulling common themes from a variety of different quotes and other qualitative data points collected.

Visualising insights through User Persona

A lean User Persona is perfect for visualising the insights from the diagram including pain points and user needs. Confused Chloe was birthed below:

The Goal

HMW enhance degree planning and unit of study selection for students at USYD desiring better alignment with their academic goals and interest

Product Sketching

We were steering towards a redesign and 2 new innovative features that would digitally address the problem

The MVP Pitch

An intuitive digital upgrade to select courses and plan your entire degree

Maintaining the 2 column layout, we implemented a drag & drag feature to enable seamless planning and selecting of units. This enables a way for students to craft a degree structure from day one, for not only current year but potential future years. A modular display and collapsable table for the selection screen on the right ensures students are not getting lost in the numerous amounts of units offered. A favourites tray is added so students can pin units they are not entirely certain on taking.

Low-fidelity MVP
conceptual solution breakdown

Redesigned layout

We discovered students were making their own excel spreadsheet to visually digest their plan, this rendered current handbooks, and the selection table very ineffective. So we decided to design a grid table which students can snap tiles of their units into.

Course table

The Dynamic Planner

Our unique innovative feature is the ability for students to select tags based on common scenarios that inevitably affect your course structure, such as going on an exchange, taking time off for an internship or repeating a unit. Once selected, the table planner will temporarily adjust the structure for students to foresee the impact this will have on their future. They can make more informed decisions and be confident in their academic journey.

Future Steps & Learnings

What happens now?

My intention is to develop a high-fidelity digital interface which I would like to pitch to Sydney University.

Some future iterations:

Develop a mid-fidelity prototype product and conduct usability and conceptual testing
Ensure it aligns with university policies and motivations
Ideate any other features beyond this MVP including ability to set academic advisory related meetings

Learnings

Not in many cases, would you use your personal experience in product design
Presentation skills and ability to anticipate Q&A during pitch is an important skill in design pitching
Have fun, strategy and innovation is fostered through creativity