Desperately searching for an empty spot to rehearse before school music events?

Project

The project is a one-week exercise to design a music rehearsal room reservation system for a newly established student center in a university for fellow students and faculty/staff and community members. This is an individual exercise and I did all the works from user research to the high-fidelity prototypes.

Involvement

User Research

Wireframes

Prototypes

Work Type

Individual

Date

2018

Problem

A new student center has been built in the school and our CHALLENGE is to facilitate students, professors and community members to check availability and reserve one of the music rehearsal spaces within the new center.

Students

Professors

Online

Reservation

Community

Members

Music Rehearsal Room

Rehearsal

lecture

Performance

Auditing

Meeting

etc...

Research - landscape analysis

Integrate world in miniature calendar to easily change dates.
Each appointment displays time duration and name
Display matrix of time and date for appointments

Lists of requirements before reserving a room: 1) room option 2) check dates 3) contact info 4) event info
One form simplifies reserving process

Clickable on the “date” option facilitates the navigation
View option on “month/day/week/lists”
Quickly search events on certain date

I started with researching existing products to get basic ideas of how the reservation system works. I looked at current university music practice room form and know some elements needed to put in and other booking system like MS Outlook to take a peek at how the general interaction flow would work. I also looked at several school event calendars to see how they display information.

Based on preliminary research, I developed three primary questions to inform my research goals and objectives:

1. What is the ideal task flow for users? Room selection and time before other information? Or time selection is before choosing the room?

2. Should I design a wizard or a form? simple v. complex

3. What are the key components in the music room reservation system?

Interviews

Due to time constraints, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 3 students and a professor over the course of two days to gain more insights on the practice rooms and user behaviors. Sample questions are as follows:

Introduction Questions:

Do you like music? Did you ever attend a band/ music group of any sort?
If so, did you ever rehearse at school? Where was it?
How did you find a place to rehearse?

Main Body Questions:

Recall the last time you tried to reserve a rehearsal room. Describe the process.
For how many days did you book the room in advance?
How do you rate the experience of the reservation process?
How did you find the right room to perform?

Wrap-up Questions:

After you successfully reserved a space, did you receive any confirmation? If so, what was it?
Do you want more people (professors/ fans?) to know about the rehearsal other than the team members?
Anything else you would like to share?

Interview notes

Synthesize Information

Analyzing from the user interviews, I gained a more in-depth understanding of the key components to be put inside the system and what are some of the user needs and behaviors that will further inform the design process.

Persona

Once clear with user behaviors, I started to generate user personas based on the similar user patterns in the interview. Below are the two personas developed based on the student who is trying to book a room and community member who mainly performs in school.

Task Flow

The user personas and primary questions informed me to make a simple, easy to use task flow with sign up/in and request room and last receive confirmation.

Ideation - Sketch

I quickly moved to sketch out several wireframe options for the system. Some questions I asked are:

What are the options for displaying calendars?
How to integrate event calendar to date selection?
How to display filters (room facilities, room number, prices and etc. )?
Radio button or dropdown menu?
Add secondary dates or rooms?

I also tried out different options for calendar displays and tested whether to adopt two-steps to choose time or one-step.

Wireframes

I moved to draw low-fi wireframes to highlight the important elements in each screen based on the task flow process diagram and are also driven by the insights I found from the researches.

Hi-Fidelity Solutions

Next Steps

1. Conduct usability testing on different groups of people to gain feedback

2. Implement and create style guides on high-fidelity designs

3. Secondary options on rooms and times upon submitting request?

4. Turn off price filters for students and faculty members?

5. Preview of information before submitting?

6. Add email lists option after confirmation of the reservation?