Breakroom
—
The virtual hangout between lectures
Breakroom is a foundational tool that acts as the first point of contact between remote first year college students and their classmates.
It bridges the disconnect between remote learning and online social interaction.
The Problem
Due to the novel Coronavirus students have been experiencing their first year of university behind a computer screen. This loss of traditional college culture has left students unable to create meaningful social connections with their classmates. The lack of interaction amongst the students has led to frustration and fatigue, both physically and mentally.
User Problems at a glance
Zoom Fatigue
Loss of motivation
Lack of spontaneity
The Goal
Create a space where first year students have permission to get to know one another without the current perceived barriers of online socialising.
Role
UX/UI Designer
Team
Eva Desmond
& David Greene
Timeline
5 weeks, 2020–2021
Process
Research
We began our process by interviewing brand-new first year students who had only ever experienced college through a computer screen.
Through contextual inquiry and our own lived-experience of college online we were afforded the opportunity to structure conversations in a way that helped us better understand and empathise with the students.
We quickly realised we needed to position ourselves towards understanding the goal required to meet the user’s needs:
We want to learn how first year students are experiencing university online and the effects it is having on their ability to forge meaningful connections; so that we might create an effective framework that increases interaction and encourages communication.
My team and I spoke to over 20 individual users. We decided to separate the users into two groups: first-year students and university staff. Having such breath of user interviews gave us a considerable overview of the effect the Coronavirus has had on the first year student experience.
“How can you read the room when there is no room?”
“I’m just going through the motions without ever engaging properly”
Define
Myself and my team reviewed the data and were able to organise our findings into emergent themes using affinity diagramming. It was clear that the first year students found it almost impossible to make friends with many aspiring to “reinvent” themselves found that the lack of college culture prevented them from doing so.
Once we had aggregated all our findings we quickly extracted our main insights.
From our affinity mapping, insights and interviews we were able to identify pain points and patterns in user perceptions which we combined into a 3 separate personas with corresponding experience maps, based on an average day of remote learning.
Our team split up to focus on individual outcomes from this point onwards. I decided to carry forward the “Kate” persona – a first-time college student.
“I just miss talking to people. We can never have a proper conversation because nothing flows over Zoom.”
Kate – User Persona
Kate – Experience Map
Ideate
Through co-creation I was able to stimulate user-centric engagement to the problem. It afforded me insightful perspectives of what the product might be expected to do.
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Sketching and rapid paper prototyping helped me to quickly develop my initial user flow. I conducted my first usability testing using paper prototypes and documented the key findings which informed my medium fidelity clickthrough prototype.
Breakroom
Breakroom exists in the space around lectures. Whether that’s getting some fresh air, or walking to class, it is in these moments that connections occur.
The app is a solution that encourages classmates to connect via icebreakers. These icebreakers are broken down into four sections – depending on the time you have between lectures.
Once the ice has been broken, and a connection is made, the user’s classmate is brought into their network so that if they want to chat further, they know exactly where to find them.
Breakroom is an app geared specifically to first-year university students. To reflect this I integrated playful design elements and a consistent, youthful UI style throughout.
I kept my colours bright and designed in dark mode as this is the preferred theme amongst my target users.
Reflection
Working alone on the design of an app was a new experience for me. In the beginning I worked as part of a team which was very beneficial in learning how to exchange ideas and to implement certain trains of thought into my own process.
Usability testing was the cornerstone of this project and I learned that the success of any app comes down to the people who will use it.
Given more time I would like to increase focus on a group feature.
