Study Buddies Interactive Kiosk

In this course DSGN 100, our final project was to create an interactive kiosk that combined both digital and physical design. My team and I decided we wanted to design an experience for educational contexts such as classrooms, lecture halls, and libraries. We wanted to tackle an issue we found prevalent among our peers and something we all had personal experience with: lack of student productivity.  

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Our goal: Design an effective and helpful interactive kiosk for students that prevents distractions and increases productivity.

Part 1: User Research & Key Findings

With that goal in mind, we set out to do user research in an environment we knew students might go to when having this issue: our school’s library. We conducted field observations of other students in the library, where we noticed many distracted students on their phones, usually with a laptop or another device open in the background containing their actual work. 

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We also conducted user interviews with students working in the library asking about their study habits in the library and what prevents them from doing their work. When asked “Can you recall a time when you had difficulty focusing or doing your work?” one student replied, “I notice when I'm at home or late at night I’ll go on my phone too much. Sometimes I have to go into my room, throw it somewhere, and go back so I'm not on my phone.”

Main insights: 

• Many students cited their phones and online notifications as significant distractors while trying to study in the library.
• Students come to the library to study because they want a quiet space, free of distractions, and often use noise-cancelling headphones to block out any noise.
• Students find it easier to focus when alone because they might get distracted by conversation if they study with friends.

Part 2: Identifying a Target User

From both our observations and user interviews, we created a persona to encapsulate our target user.

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We also brainstormed user scenarios and storyboards illustrating potential solutions for improving productivity in the library. We then converged on one solution we thought had the most potential and met our design goals the best: a study kiosk with productivity motivators and a phone lock-box.

Part 3: Ideation and Low Fidelity Prototyping

We then listed key features for our kiosk, including a timed phone lock-box, noise cancelling headphones, and a task list to keep users organized. From our competitive analysis, we learned about the Pomodoro Technique, a popular time management method among students based on 25-minute stretches of focused work broken by five-minute breaks. We decided to incorporate a Pomodoro timer into our product to give students a chance to take breaks from their work as well. To gamify the whole experience and make studying feel fun, we added a virtual pet that users could take care of during their study session. Our initial user flow looked like this:

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We then began sketching wireframes for both the digital user interface and the physical body of the kiosk.

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We worked on our physical interactions by paper prototyping and trying our flow out with real users. 

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For the design of our digital component, we made a moodboard inspired by other task manager apps and virtual pet simulators. The key words for our design aesthetic were modern, clean, fun, and motivating.

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Based off of this moodboard, we created a style guide for our interfaces as well.

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Part 4: High Fidelity Prototyping 

Using feedback from our lo-fi prototypes, we created a high fidelity version of our kiosk from scratch. We used Figma to prototype our digital application which we designed to fit the screen of an iPad Air. We then used an Epilog laser cutter and Inkscape to build the physical kiosk out of ⅛”-thick plywood. 

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We then presented our completed Study Buddies kiosk to our class, who got to be real users and try out our kiosk for themselves!

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Our final digital flows looked like this:

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Part 5: User Testing

We then brought our kiosk back to the library to conduct user testing in the context it would be used in. We asked real students to try out our kiosk and gave them authentic tasks to complete in order to replicate the entire user flow. 

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We then asked them about their experience and what they thought could be improved. Some major findings we saw after 4 user tests:

• The feature that was the most useful is the phone lock-box.
• 2/4 users were confused by our phone unlock screen at the end.
• 2/4 users liked the Pomodoro timer and mentioned that they already use something similar.

Based on our findings, we came up with some design considerations for future iterations of Study Buddies. 

• Be more clear on why the user is setting up the phone to be locked up later
• Add pictures and a more detailed description of how to set up “Do Not Disturb” on the phone
• Put “Phone Lockup” a little later in the flow
• Make the phone lockbox a bit taller to fit more phone sizes

Part 6: Reflection

I had such a great time working on this kiosk and am so proud of the finished product my group and I were able to produce! It was especially unique combining digital prototypes with the physical shell of the kiosk itself and building it completely from scratch. While there were definitely many roadblocks, especially with building the physical frame of the kiosk, I learned how to use failures as an opportunity to learn what not to do next time instead of discouragement. Shoutout to the Design Lab @ UCSD for for providing us with the material, space, and resources to complete our kiosk and to my amazing teammates!