Design Review

We chose to develop our connection-centered design because we feel that it will best serve our various user segments and will accomplish the tasks central to our platform’s performance. The use of a mobile platform with design references to other commonly used conversation-based apps will create a comfortable and familiar space for our users to interact with one another, a key requirement articulated during our contextual inquiry process. Further, we chose to use a design that centers the interpersonal connection aspect of our platform because we feel that the ability to easily find other users and connect with them best fulfills the wants expressed by users in interviews and contextual inquiries. Correspondingly, we chose to continue to develop our design to fulfill the user task “find others who have similar interests to you.” This task is central to our goal of providing useful and personal information to college applicants everywhere. Additionally, we feel that this task provides significant opportunities to incorporate the principles of design that we have learned this semester. We also chose to continue developing our design for the task “speak candidly without fear of repercussion from colleges.” We believe that to effectively provide our applicant users with information that they cannot obtain through other means. By separating our platform from college application offices, we hope to design a product on which users are able and willing to ask genuine questions and provide genuine responses. We feel that pursuing these tasks through a connection-centered design will allow us to create a robust platform for providing useful and unique information for the college search process.

Task 1: Find other users with similar interests to you

Task 2: Speak candidly without fear of repercussion from colleges