Reporting Facility Issues on Campus​​​​​​​

Google Design Challenge 2020
Individual Design Project
Design Prompt 

“Your school wants to improve the upkeep of campus facilities by creating a new system for reporting any facilities that may need maintenance or repair. Design an experience that allows students to report building or equipment issues on campus. Consider the process of those filing the report and of those receiving and taking action on the issues.” 
As a current New York University (NYU) student, I used NYU as the context to tackle this problem and design.
01   Understand the Goal

What do I need to know before I start designing?​​​​​​​
•   What's the current situation of the NYU reporting system? (Need Research)
•   What's the problem about it? How do users think and feel about it? (Need Research)
•   Why does NYU want to improve the upkeep of campus facilities by creating a new reporting system? What's the benefit of this? 
             ➡   To make the process of filling and handling the report easier and conveniently
             ➡   To help fix the broken facilities in time to avoid any inconvenience
             ➡   To make users learn to take good care of the campus facilities
             ➡   To foster students' a sense of responsibility and work together to build a better community
02   Current Situation Analysis 

First, as a current New York University (NYU) student, I reflected on my past college experience and considered "If I see a damaged campus facility, what will I do?"  ​​​​​​​
I immediately thought about 3 ways to report campus facility issues. 
Since I have never actually reported anything at NYU, I started by exploring the current experience of NYU's reporting process. (This reporting process was verified in the following user research) 

The process of the current facility reporting flow

NYU Facilities and Operations Official Website

Work Request Form

03   User Research

PART 1: Interview with the School

Who are the Stakeholders?
I first interviewed an NYU facility manager, hoping to verify the reporting method I discovered previously, and to have a further understanding of the overall process. I got to understand that there are 3 major users involved in this process: student, NYU client service center, and building management team
What's the overall user flow?
What's the problem on the school side?
PART 2: Interview with Students

Next, I conducted in-depth interview with my end users - 6 NYU students, trying to understand:
➊   Their past facility report experiences
➋   Situational Questions: If you see a damaged campus facility, what will you do? (Give examples)
➌   Test with the current NYU facility report system and see what they like or dislike about.

Here are some key user insights:
04   User Profile and Journey Map

The user profile and journey map is created based on user research findings, and it highlights a student's experience of reporting facility issues on NYU campus
This step helped me gain a clearer picture on the existing problems in the current system and discover potential design opportunities. 

(Click to enlarge)

Key user touch points that can be improved
05   Ideation and Prototyping

Part 1: 
How might we make the report service more visible and accessible to students?
Prioritizing ideas
I used Impact/Effort matrix for prioritizing ideas. Among the four ideas, I decided to move forward with the QR code idea because this can provide higher impacts with lower efforts to build. 
How can we better use the QR code?
Although I chose the idea of QR code, I doubt that adding QR code to all items. By asking the question "What's the first thing people will see once they scan the QR code?", I was able to decide the better use of the QR code.

By balancing the pros and cons, I decided to move forward on the idea #3: Once scan the QR code, users will be directed to an official NYU facility report site. In this way, we don't need to put QR codes on every facility, we can publicize it through different ways such as email newsletter, booklet, poster with the code on it so as to increase the exposure of this QR code as much as possible.
Part 2: 
How might we simplify the information filling experience?

After people scan to the facility reporting site, what do they need to fill in? 
According to the school, there are 3 things they would like to know from students:
I also revisited the user research to see the pain points of the school management team (Repetitive report and low efficiency), so as to keep this in mind when I am designing. 
How does the design help students?

By making the reporting service more accessible and simple, it is helping to encourage students to report facility issues on campus.
How does the design help the school (client service center)?

Designing for students is also designing for the school. ​​​​​​​
06   Consideration of Digital Accessibility​​​​​​​
NYU strives to provide excellent digital access to all. As a UX designer, I am responsible to make sure that everyone has equal access to the facility report form. When designing, I constantly referred to the basic guidelines from Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) and tried to make my designs work and look closer to the guidelines.​​​​​​​
07   Final Design
1.  Simple and Accessible Report Service

Facility Report Informational Posters will be placed around the school campus

Scan to Report

2.  Presenting Information in Bite-sized Units
3.  Choose from Options for Accuracy and Completeness
4.  Typing-free Information Filling Experience
5.  Accessible on Multiple Platforms
Thanks for your time!
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