Study Goal

How can companies increase the amount of items bought by college students on mobile devices? Students have a relatively low budget to work with as most don’t have a stable source of income or they work at relatively low paying jobs, so companies don’t want to alienate an entire potential group of customers, only because they don’t have a lot of disposable income. College students have very social lives and some put more time and effort into their social lives rather than the work they are supposed to be doing. This proposes an opportunity for students to share the latest trends in fashion, technology, etc. with each other, which could potentially lead to more sales of certain items on e-shopping sites.

Target Audience

The Target Audience of this project is college students. As stated above, college students spread trends like a plague among themselves, so a product or idea that launches in a college campus setting has the potential to gain a large customer base, very quickly. Also college students are more open to trying new things, so it will be easier to convince them to try your new product or idea.

Research Methods

I asked the questions from my survey to my participants and did not really differ from them, because I didn't feel I needed to to get the information I was looking for.

How I Recruited Users

I talked to a few of my friends in each of my classes and was able to find three of them to survey for this project.

Number of Participants

3

Key Insights From The Interviews

Mobile Shopping Is Convenient:

All three participants said that it is more convenient to buy things on their phone, rather than on their computer. Unsurprisingly, all three participants spend the majority of their money on Amazon. All three of the people I talked to had Amazon Prime Student accounts too. Relic said that he mainly browses for items on his phone and will place them in his shopping cart on his phone, but when it comes to purchasing the actual item, he will usually do it from his computer “just to make sure everything looks good”. Mac also said that “it’s hard to catch deals when you’re at your computer, vs. looking at them as they pop up on your phone.”, so this adds to the convenience factor.

Amazon Is Convenient:

Amazon offers two day shipping on all or most of the products on their store. They also have Prime Video, which is similar to Netflix and Hulu, Audiobooks and Ebooks via Audible and Kindle, a storage solution similar to Google Drive, a Credit Card with Cash Back, etc. Amazon is trying to be an all in one solution for everything on the internet and it’s working. Physical stores are closing everywhere around the country and companies that aren’t adjusting to this new e-commerce trend are going under extremely fast or are struggling i.e. Sears, Toys R’ Us, Gamestop, etc.

New Apps And New Features In Apps Have The Potential To Spread Like Wildfire:

Everyone I interviewed said that they, at least, sometimes tell their network of people about new features of apps and/or new apps, so that means, if a new app were to hit the market, it would have the potential to spread like wildfire on a college campus. This was shown when Snapchat redesigned their app and it caused a ton of people to talk about it on Facebook and Twitter and on campus too, so it’s easier than ever to release a new app or feature and have it either bring in a lot of customers or turn them away.

Amazon Provides Enough of a Value Proposition For College Students To Purchase It:

With there being an Amazon shipping store right off campus, and Amazon offering one day shipping on select products, if you ship it to that store, there is a huge incentive to buy Amazon Prime for students, because they can get anything they want delivered right to them. They don’t have to worry about finding a way to get off campus to buy items and they can always count on Amazon having the lowest prices for products.

Study Goal

Right now, Augmented Reality (AR) is not that advanced. Microsoft is working on the Hololens, which incorporates Virtual Reality (VR) and AR into a headset that people can wear and it will make all of your interactions similar to how Jarvis works in Iron Man. The Hololens is for the future though and as of right now, there aren’t very many use cases for AR. I am looking for a way to expand the use cases of AR and gather people’s ideas, so they can develop more apps and games for VR together. This app would allow like minded people to come together and work towards the goal of progressing AR.

Target Audience

My Target Audience is developers who have worked with AR in the past or are looking to work with AR in the future, because they see a potential use case for it that other people may not. My Target Audience is also extended to people who are interested in learning more about AR and that may have ideas about the possibilities of AR, but don’t have the knowledge or skills to create their ideas. They can work with developers, via the app, that have experience with AR or that are just getting into AR to make their ideas come to life.

Personas

Design

Screenshots of Prototype:

Prototype:

Key Responsibilities

Our group didn't really divide up the work for the project. We all pitched in on everything, except for the app design. Andrew took the initiative on making the app, while asking us for feedback. Other than this, everything was done collaboratively.

Study Goal

Our study goal was determing whether or not college students would use our app when attending parties.

Target Audience

Our target audience is college students who host and/or go to a lot of parties. Ideally they would want to allow their guests to queue up whatever song they want to be played at parties, with the host being able to pick and choose which songs actually get played.

Research Methods Used

In order to conduct our interviews, we interviewed people at parties and our friends who we know go to parties regularly.

Observation & Interview Findings

We found that party-goers would love an app like this and that party hosts would also be open to using an app like this. This means that it would be a hit with our intended target audience i.e. college students.

First App Design

Evalution Findings

Funnily enough, people loved our app and had little to no complaints about our app. Therefore, we took this as an opportunity to improve upon our existing app, with the changes shown below.

App Redesign