Jacinda Eng

NTOR

INFO

Throughout the 10-week Informatics Design Methods class at the University of Washington, I identified the topic of undergraduate stress and collaborated with peers to alleviate the stress for students with a team evidence-based design research project. My team designed NTOR on Figma, a mentor-mentee matching app where students at the University could meet academic and personal mentors to guide them in their college journey.

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REFLECTING ON..

"How do we envision our ideal university to look like?

"How would it look like 5-10 years down the line?"

"How would the university be able to alleviate stress from its students?"


INITIAL LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

Low-fidelity paper prototype sketching out how mentees enter their preferences when choosing a mentor through a questionnaire form, check the mentors’ availability through a calendar feature, plan meetups with their mentor and other mentees at events, and communicate through live chat and video call features. 

FIRST ITERATION HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

For the first prototype, we established a playful yet calming color scheme for the app to foster a restorative experience. Designing a simplistic interface was key in keeping the usability stress-free. The first three screens provide mentees a questionnaire to match with a mentor based off of common interests. The goal of this app is to provide opportunities for mentees to build a friendship with mentors through connecting at restorative events such as an art walk. Students are encouraged to explore and connect with different mentors as they are provided easy communication via an online chat platform.

  • * I designed the Events and Events Features screens.

USER INTERVIEW

My entire team conducted individual user interviews with students at the university. I decided to interview a sophomore with no prior experience being in a mentorship program to gauge the app’s usability for first-time mentees.

EXPERT FEEDBACK

My team interviewed three industry professionals with experience in mindfulness, information visualization, and design ethics to get their feedback on the initial prototype.

FINAL PROTOTYPE

Quite a few changes were made to the final prototype include adding a community feed allowing users to post new updates that can be seen on all users’ home screen. My team learned to not limit user’s responses in the questionnaire which is why some of the questions have a text box response. Users noted that there was ambiguity regarding the welcoming question and icons on the initial home screen. Labels were added to clarify the icons and the question was deleted to avoid any confusion. My team decided that implementing a calendar was important as we want to ease the stress of communicating and scheduling a time to meet. 

  • * I designed the top row of screens in the above image grid.