web design
Web Platform to Increase Student Engagement
ROLE
UX Designer
YEAR
2023
At Purdue University, men's basketball games have been sold out for the past few years- well before the season even starts. With a highly-ranked team that has produced stars like Jaden Ivey or Zach Edey is bound for national attention (I may be a bit biased here), and this has only increased desire to attend home games.
Unfortunately, many students are unaware on how to attend games. Most information regarding attendance is spread over multiple platforms, none of which are associated with Purdue. For first-time attendees, this not only prevents them from attending games, but also from learning how to stay involved with student sections, all which can shape a college experience.
The project goal was to streamline scheduling tasks for individuals and businesses alike, leveraging artificial intelligence to optimize time management and productivity.
*This project focuses specifically on men's basketball as its recent rise in national interest has caused games to be sold out months in advance, making ticketing access even more difficult.
Role 👩💻
This was my individual capstone project: I oversaw and conducted every process of this project. I created the proposal, timeline, conducted research/interviews/testing, and prototyped the final design.
Tools + Processes 🛠️
3 Milestones: Understanding first-time attendees, understanding student sections (season-long attendees), and creating a platform to address both first-time and season-long attendees.
Used Figma, Miro, and Google Suite
This category details the step-by-step approach taken during the project, including research, planning, design, development, testing, and optimization phases.
Project Planning
The first challenge was mapping out my project milestones. I wanted to create checkpoints for myself to ensure I would be on track to finishing the project, but I also wanted to be able to accomplish these tasks in a non-waterfall way. I settled on creating 3 project milestones that would each address a different aspect of my final goal.
My milestones were to research first-time attendees and how they access information, research how student sections function (also known as season-long attendees), and finally using those insights and creating a platform to address both first-time and season-long attendees.
Understanding the Space
From screening surveys and interviews that I conducted, I found that first-time attendees did not have a general understanding of where to buy tickets. Many thought they should go to StubHub, use GroupMe, or ask a friend.
With StubHub, this platform only sells general tickets. Student tickets run about $100 cheaper, and not knowing this information can discourage someone from looking further (or, overpaying). With GroupMe, many of these GroupMe's are being shut down from scams because there isn't an official or Purdue-affiliated student buy/sell ticket system. Additionally, many students share the biggest concern of getting scammed when trying to buy a ticket.
Lastly, when asking a friend, it continues the disconnect between students who know how to buy a ticket and those who don't since they continue to rely on the friend who knows how to buy a ticket. Purdue Athletics has its own website, and I found from my interviews that first-time attendees did not know it existed.
When I began my second milestone, I found many similarities where students relied on friends to know how to get involved with men's basketball. Certain games have to be attended to gain a chance at joining the student section (which gives tickets to every home game), but this has to be known at the beginning of the basketball season.
The knowledge of getting involved is passed down from older students to underclassmen, and is often told late in the year to take action.
Implementation
With this knowledge, I started ideating on different ways students could have all of the information regarding attending sporting events to be found in a single area. I sketched out ideas on different platforms, such as mobile application, web page, or a social media account. Some of these were new, some of them were ammendments to existing applications (such as Purdue affiliated pages).
I then concept tested with users in my target group (who had never attended a game or who wanted to join a student section) and found a positive reaction to having the information on a platform that was officially associated with MyPurdue.
My final design was an amendment to MyPurdue, a site used by all Purdue students to navigate class registration, financial aid, and other links. I avoided the Purdue Athletics page as my interviews found that many students didn't think to check that page, or know it existed. With MyPurdue, all students are aware of the page as they are required to learn to navigate it as a freshman, and continue to use it every semester to register for classes. Thus, my final design is a separate “Athletics” tab.
This page, when toggled to select “Men’s Basketball,” will have information displaying upcoming games, ticketing, student sections, helpful terms, and additional resources.
*This project mostly focused on the card layout and titles while the individual links within are not completely finalized due to limited time.
After my final presentation, many students came to express how they would have loved a resource like this when they were an underclassmen, and especially those who wanted to "experience a basketball game at least one time as a senior." If I had more time, I would have liked to develop this alongside the Purdue team to make it an actual resource for students. Participating in Purdue basketball was a highlight of my college career, and I would love to be able to share it with other students.
This project is now used as a reference for underclassmen taking this course.
To learn more, view the full documentation here.