CamCom.
The Campus Complaints App
Independent UX Study
Time: 1 week
About the project
CamCom is an app-based concept to ease the campus infrastructure complaints redressal process.
Challenge:
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Most students in Indian residential colleges have two primary concerns about campus complaints redressal: lack of an online process and the inability to track complaint status. Sometimes, there are emergency complaints which can endanger the security of the campus residents, so the UX must be as simple and time-saving as possible.
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My role:
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Product Strategy
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User research & Analysis
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Persona creation
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Wireframes
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UI Design & Prototyping
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Illustration/Icon design
THE PROCESS
Build. Measure. Learn.
I used Lean UX principles in the development of "CamCom" to focus on users and their needs at each phase of the design process:
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Formulate and validate the existing problem.
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Conduct extensive user research and testing with several residing students to unveil unexpected pain points in the current process.
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Focus on research results to create features that users really need.
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Prioritize user needs and consider the viability of features in the solution.
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RESEARCH &
PROBLEM DEFINITION
A look at the existing process
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​The present process in most of the college campuses in India is physical. One needs to go to the complaints office and find the relevant register to enter his/her complaints. Apart from that, repairs are done mostly 2-7 days from the date of writing the complaint and lack any kind of tracking feature.
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The Problem
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A real-life campus scenario would best depict the current problem.
Rahim is a sophomore at NIT Rourkela. He lives in Hall-9 and is a diligent student. One hot summer day, the fan stopped functioning in the room he lived in. When he reached the complaints office, he saw a huge queue of students waiting in front of the locked office room. Rahim had to miss his first lecture so that he could write the complaint. He couldn’t risk any delay as temperatures shoot up to 48 degrees Celsius during summers. Unfortunately for him, he had to make 2 more visits to the complaints office later that day as there was no other way to confirm if his fan would be repaired that day itself or not.
"I believe that developing an app that provides an online complaints redressal process for campus infrastructure issues, will make the process easier, more accountable, and save a considerable amount of time."
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Research
Policies and Objectives
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Before proceeding to carry out user research, I researched the current policies to understand the HRD (Education) ministry’s objectives towards this and found that:
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'The All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has made it mandatory for all its affiliated institutions to put grievance redressal mechanisms in place so that “each institute is able to receive and dispose of grievances online.”'
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"The current procedure to file a complaint is very cumbersome. Also, since the office is quite far, I find it difficult to visit it on a busy day."
"We face a lot of problems especially due to the lack of predictability of the whole process. It is often delayed and we don’t even get to know the reason."
"Once, the staff came in my absence and went away. Since I was unaware of this, I patiently waited. After a week, I went to the office and had to file the complaint once again when I got to know this."
In-person interviews about the existing process
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As a student of an institute of national importance, I hold a firm opinion of policy and process changes but it is necessary to think of other students and their opinions before deciding on the design of the app.
I asked a few other students of my parent institute, NIT Rourkela about how they felt about the current process and what their difficulties were. Here are three opinions.
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Conducting User Survey
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To gain insights into the infrastructure grievances redressal system of other institutes, I conducted a user survey to discover more pain points and to confirm my hypothesis. To reach a larger audience, I wrote a short, 14-question survey and posted it on different online communities, Facebook, and Whatsapp groups that matched the target user profile. I received 12 responses and the survey was filled by students of premier Indian Institutes like IIT Kharagpur, IIT Bombay, NIT Rourkela, IIM Indore, IIT Bhilai.
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Results:
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It was found that while almost every school had a redressal facility in place, 66.7% (i.e. two-thirds) were dissatisfied with it.
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The most common issues were: non-functioning lights/fans and broken doors/furniture/windows.
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Only about a quarter reported that their issues were resolved within 2 days.
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About half the schools reportedly didn’t have a way to check complaint status.
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Two-thirds had to go back to complaints office at least once.
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About half of them felt discouraged to go and file complaints themselves and about half of them cited ‘Lack of reliability’ as the reason for it.
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91% of the students felt that an app-based redressal would be best.
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Personas
Based on the user research I set up two personas. I referred to them (especially the student persona) throughout the entire product development process.
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Each persona had a scenario that identified a realistic goal the user might have when working with this app and facing the identified problems.
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The information about each persona focused on its goals and frustrations with the campus complaints redressal process as well as their interaction with it, which drastically affected my design decisions.
Design Impact
Focussing especially on the interactional context of each persona helped me to understand the physical, environmental and emotional state of the user at the moment of the interaction. This process has significantly influenced the development of important design decisions and key functionalities. Some examples are as follows:
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A login feature to allow authorised campus residents to use it.
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Basic data collection for future records
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Tracking feature to make the process accountable
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Important contacts for a hassle-free way to contact concerned people.
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A verification and rating feature as an evidence and encouragement for future
User Journey
I've created a user flow diagram to map every step of the user interaction required to achieve the main goal of this app: "As a user, I want to file complaints online and track them too”
DESIGN EXPLORATION
Ideating Solutions
Low-fidelity sketched Wireframes:
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I sketched each iteration and added the elements and screens that were necessary to reach users' goals, to quickly see which ideas worked best. I tested it with a few hostel mates who would be the primary users and got to know their opinion of it.
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Findings:
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Users found the reviewing process (rating out of 10) a bit too objective
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Users opined that remotely telling the worker of their problems might be difficult at times.
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Design solutions:
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The reviewing process was made subjective and emojis were used instead of scores.
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An option to add a picture of the complaint was added to enable better communication with the complaints office.
Prototyping
Medium-fidelity Wireframes:
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I turned my revised sketches into a black and white interactive prototype done with Balsamiq. I defined UI elements, design patterns, and visual hierarchy. I tested the prototype in-person and remotely.
Findings:
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Users found the sign-up too lengthy.
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Users asked for the option to see the name and contact number of the actual worker assigned to fix their complaints in addition to the Complaints Officer’s number
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Users were of the opinion that chronologically searching for complaints might be cumbersome at times.
Design solutions:
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The sign-up process was made easier with lesser fields, with institute email-id being the crucial step in verification.
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A field with the worker’s name and his/her phone number was integrated into the complaints’ status section in the app.
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In addition to sorting chronologically, a feature to search by keywords was included.
VISUAL DESIGN
Designed for Simplification
After a few more iterations, I designed the final screens with Adobe XD. I conducted A/B testings during the process to define the design pattern, elements and colours.
My aim was a clean, modern look that helps users fulfil their goals quickly. "CamCom" is a problem-solver; therefore, I focused on the colours scheme to help transmit trust and reliability.
I also designed a couple of simple layout illustrations to keep the look contextual and modern.
WRAPPING UP
What I learnt in this project
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Research is a must – I couldn’t have designed a product that users can use effortlessly without the help of the people who will actually use it when the time comes. The user survey revealed some really useful information and pain-points and made it possible to adapt the product to users’ needs.
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Empathy is key – Being aware of users’ needs and pain points helped me to create a seamless, end-to-end experience. And this was possible due to empathy. Being a residing student too helped me empathise better in the process.
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Test, test and test – Conducting user testing and evaluating users feedback at various stages helped me to discover and eliminate pain point at early stages. I learnt that testing just once isn’t enough when I discovered that even my second iteration had a few unsolved pain points. Hence, research alone isn’t enough and testing at every stage helps.
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