Silo Buster

Supporting Graduate Students in Research Collaboration

Project Overview

In an effort to support graduate students in connecting and sharing their research with their peers, we created a low-fidelity prototype of our conceptual model. This prototype is a potential solution to the problem of finding other students with similar interests, as a result, our overall goal was to evaluate the matching component of our system. Particularly, we focused on assessing our design for the interest creation, event searching, user matching, and event creation tasks and with an emphasis on evaluating their learnability and satisfaction.

Presentation

Project Presentation

Project Details

The project involved multiple iterations of design and evaluation:

  1. Initial Cognitive Walkthrough
  2. User Testing Design
  3. Prototype Evaluation
  4. Results Analysis
  5. Final Recommendations

Prototypes

Low-Fidelity Prototype
Medium-Fidelity Prototype

Research Reports

The following reports document our research process:

  1. Field Work Report
    • https://drive.google.com/file/d/13y3YVyxTqIexRS2WvYunGl9z3jPAun-e/view?usp=sharing
  2. Task, Requirement & Personas
    • https://drive.google.com/file/d/140D6XFcqzId3nDbDSLAomb4RgDFJ966m/view?usp=sharing
  3. Conceptual Models & Sketches
    • https://drive.google.com/file/d/14DJNj5lXMcKiZMb_9BObYLEf0iOHqYrP/view?usp=sharing
  4. User Testing Design Report
    • https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j33tyd0U6tvtDmSBpuiiMi51Hcol1rTW/view?usp=sharing
  5. Medium Fidelity Prototype Report
    • https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U2pQHyCGXoBMZMPCauonh2XhpyLeEjOh/view?usp=sharing
  6. Final Presentation
    • https://drive.google.com/file/d/14DVawidos9_olkSFjBA70a2OAf_0f9Sb/view?usp=sharing

Key Findings

  • Evaluation of interest creation and matching components
  • Assessment of event searching and creation features
  • Learnability and satisfaction metrics
  • User feedback and improvement suggestions

Technical Details

The project focuses on:

  • User interface design and prototyping
  • Usability testing methodologies
  • User experience evaluation
  • Design iteration and improvement

References