3RD
A digital solution to finding perfect study spot in Toronto.
Timeline: February – May 2025 (12 weeks)
Role: Lead User Researcher, Lead UX/UI Designer
Team Members: Melody Chen
As a university student, finding a quiet place to study on campus can be difficult. Students have the option to study at home, on-campus, or in a third space (e.g. a café or library), but may have different needs which make it frustrating to find a location that works best for them.
Going into this project, we asked ourselves, "How might we help students find available and accessible places to study in their neighbourhood, based on their needs and preferences?"
User Research & Insights
I conducted user interviews with several university and college students that attend school near or within Downtown Toronto.
The goal of these interviews was to learn more about my target audience’s demographics, study habits, needs, and ideal working environment.
Below are three categories that presented the most valuable findings from the interviews.
User Persona + Task Flows
Based on our insights, a user persona and empathy map was crafted to further investigate their needs and pain points. The journey map provides a scenario where Aisha explores a new study space.
Informed by our user research, a selection of 4 key tasks from onboarding to saving a study space were created to advance our design process.
3RD is designed to help users find study spaces outside of home and school environments.
It prioritizes the user’s needs through filtering practical and personal preferences to find an optimal study environment.
The visual design of the app has a simplistic approach with accents of colour to complement its insightful and accommodating impression.
We wanted to make it quick and easy for students to browse and compare various study spots.
Reviews, distance, and personal needs were the most important to our interviewees, so we made sure this information was immediately available.
Takeaways
This project provided me with lots of insight into how user research and usability testing is important when developing seamless user experiences.
Receiving feedback, thoughts, and behaviours from my target audience was very useful when designing this product! This project has taught me the importance of truly understanding the audience that we design for.
Want to learn more about me?
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