Problem Statement
A mobile application experience to help Western Washington University students safely find ideal roommates.
Roommies offers opportunities for the students to attend various in-person activities and events that are facilitated by the university to meet and get to know others.
Research
Research for this project included a market analysis on existing applications, a heuristic evaluation, and interviews. I found that there is no existing application for students at specific universities that has activities and events integrated in the app. The intended audience would prefer to have a roommate that they are close with or already know and if it is someone new, they would like to meet them in person and get to know them a little bit first before rooming together.
Market Analysis
Heuristic Evaluation
Interview Questions & Summary
Personas
After all research was conducted, I developed a persona that highlights the individual that represents my primary targeted user audience.
Ideation & Wireframes
The task that I focused on for this application was for a student user to be interested and end up going to an event to meet and get to know potential roommates.
Below are some initial sketches that I had in mind for Roommie and then followed by some low-fidelity and mid-fidelity wireframes of the proposed interfaced.
After observing a few user testings, along with comments and suggestions from critiques, I have changed my overall look for my events and messages cards to follow more of a universal model.
I wanted this application to still resemble Western Washington University so I decided to stay with the color theme of blue.
User Flow
For the next phase of this project, I would expand on giving the users more opportunities to browse and look at potential roommates through the app itself. Creating a separate page, dropdown, or a pop-up window to show the list of students that are interested and/or are going to the events. As well as having the option to send them a message.
A link to the final working prototype is available to access here:
https://www.figma.com/proto/VTWF05hWXNvfFPsIXCETMp/APDZ381-Roomie-for-WWU?node-id=71-364&starting-point-node-id=71%3A364&scaling=scale-down&mode=design&t=gcGL52XOm4DUUPbH-1