ERASMUS CLUB
/a school project
Problem
Based on me and my project partners own experience of being a exchange student we saw a potential need of an application for students moving to a country that is new to them. We also talked to other students in the same situation to get additional input and a better picture of the intended use of the app. What we found was that Erasmus students arriving to Portugal wants to explore and visit many different places, their knowledge about the language and how to get around is very limited which makes it difficult. It can also be hard to meet other erasmus-students to establish a social network and open up the possibility of travelling together.
Goal
A desire emerged to be able to bond with other students by going on trips together that can be arranged and planned easily. Inspiration should be easy accessible and information about places worth visiting, as well as suggestions for flexible transport routes at a good price was also important to solve the problem. We started brainstorming and mapping out different aspects of how this app could help improve the life of the users in their current situation.
Design Process
To kickstart our process we began browsing the internet for inspiration, for example we checked different applications and created a moodboard. We also found three currently existing apps that we got inspired by, those are —Moovit, Pinterest, Hostel World. In the next step we created personas, storyboards and user journeys to narrow all this information down.
Testing
Based on our moodboard and user journeys we created a prototype that was tested on four erasmus students, currently doing their exchange studies in Portugal, in the ages between 20-26. The test focused on finding out whether or not the navigation structure was understandable and if the interaction flow was easy to follow. This was tested by giving the participants a number of tasks to complete with the prototype. These tasks were stated to the participants as follows: find some general information about Nazaré, plan a trip to Porto on the 1st of december and create a travel group for that trip, add a friend and view your latest chat conversation
UI Kit
Results
The participants gave us valuable input regarding placement of certain elements. For example they said that it would be better if the “Friends” tab was included in the bottom navigation bar instead of being embedded in the Profile tab. This felt like a natural change to make since the social aspect of the app is one of the main features. Therefore we decided to replace “Chat” with “Friends” in the bottom navigation and move it to the top navigation where it still can be visible for the user at all times.
