Clubify
Your map to getting involved
Role
Product Designer
UX Researcher
UI Designer
Team
Individual
Tools
Figma
Google Forms
Timeline
2 weeks (May 2021)
OVERVIEW
A school club organization platform for students to browse student organizations and keep track of club events and announcements
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I stayed in my hometown while pursuing my college studies online. In my time there, I talked to many current students of my high school, and a problem that came up was the integration of student organizations in the school community. As my first ever UX project, I was motivated to make a central platform for easier navigation of student organizations.
PROBLEM
The high school has 100+ clubs and student organizations for students to navigate, but there is no central platform for students to find information on student organizations and club events & announcements.
But how did I arrive at this central problem?
USER RESEARCH
I was curious to see if current and former students at the high school had experienced the same pain points in navigating clubs and activities.
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I developed a questionnaire of mainly short answer questions as I wanted to get more organic responses to prompts. In total, I received 42 responses from students, relatively equally distributed between each current grade level and of various gender identifications.
HOW STUDENTS DISCOVER/FIND CLUBS
< 7.14% of students use the school official PDF Club Booklet
76.18% of students rely on the annual Club Activities Fair and interpersonal interactions to learn about new student organizations
16.68% of students rely on marketing material such as social media and flyers/posters
The official Club Booklet, which includes a description and an email for each club, is only used by less than 7.14% of students -- it is also only updated annually, meaning new clubs are not added until the next school year. This means students are mainly only exposed to all the clubs once -- at the Annual Club Fair at the beginning of the school year, which once again disadvantages new clubs created during the school year when they need exposure the most.
HOW STUDENTS KEEP TRACK OF CLUB ANNOUNCEMENTS AND EVENTS
< 16.7% of students use the school official Schoology Announcements system
61.1% of students rely on Wechat group chat messages sent out by club leaders
22.2% of students don't have a specific place in which they keep track
The original Schoology Announcements system means all club announcements to the entire high school were sent on a Monday post in the same feed as class announcements -- announcements and events easily go by unread. For announcements in Wechat group chats for club members, it's hard for club leaders to make sure that members have seen the announcements.
Through interviews and short answer questions from the questionnaire,
I synthesized 2 main pain points from the students
I interviewed 4 students, one from each grade level, about their experiences in extracurricular activities and club participation. Through these interviews and short answers from the questionnaire, I was able to find 2 main pain points students had with interacting with student organizations.
1. Students aren't able or don't know where to find the information about all the clubs that are available​
"The club lists are sometimes not updated and the club officers change every year, so it's hard to keep track of which club is still running and by who ... "
"Beyond Club Fair, there isn't much introduction to the clubs we have. Therefore, if you missed a booth at club fair, you may never find your most suitable club!"
" If you start off as a small club then it's hard to become a big club because no one knows about the events you host or what you do."
​2. Students are often unaware of club events/announcements, especially for clubs they are not members of
"I think it's easier to communicate within the club but sometimes there are challenges reaching broader demographics that may not necessarily be part of the "niche" that my club serves."
"Unless you tell people personally, often times, we promote something for weeks and find out that none of our friends know it's happening"
"I feel like getting the message to the SAS community is a challenge we face. Although we promote an event through WeChat, Schoology, and posters, student's don't really pay attention to these."
SOLVING THE PROBLEM
From my research, it shows that organization is the key to solving the pain points.
Based on the 2 pain points, I will address the following 3 main requirements in my design:
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How to find clubs, according to personal interest, in a systematic matter
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How to build a connection between member-prospects and club leaders
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How to interact with both school-wide and club-member announcements & events
I decided here to make a centralized platform for all student organization interactions that will help students find all the information they need.
FEATURES
Based on the 3 requirements, I created went through an ideation phase that resulted in 3 main features:​
Feature 1
Discover Clubs
Users have access to a collection of all student organizations available and can view club profiles that include important information personalized by club leaders. Users can also filter their club search, such as subject and meeting times, or manually search club names.
Feature 2
Club Chats
Users have the ability to contact club leaders directly about any questions they might have through a chats function. Users can also request to join clubs, sending in a personalizable application for easy communication between club leaders and prospective members.
Feature 3
Announcements/Events Feed
The landing page allows users to see a feed of recent announcements and upcoming events. Users are able to filter between events and announcements they are members of and those that are school-wide to provide personalization through a calendar as well.
DESIGN DECISIONS
I created wireframes and clickable grey-scale versions of the overall layout that included the 3 main features to treat the 2 pain points​
USER TESTING AND ITERATIONS
I conducted user testing by using a clickable prototype with 3 users. Here are the 2 major takeaways and design iterations:
Iteration 1
Sorting/Filtering Events
2 out of 3 users pointed out that it was a little hard to navigate and understand the sorting of events. Compared to Club Profiles and Announcements, which had their respective filters, Events only had a list of upcoming events.
I decided to add a function in both the Calendar and Upcoming Events section that would allow users to filter through events based off of 3 categories -- school-wide, clubs they were a member of, and all club events.
Iteration 2
Sharing Plans
1 user pointed how they were unsure how this app was to be connected with the rest of the platforms that clubs were already using.
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I decided to add a function that would allow users to post events to social media to not only let others know their plans, but also help spread the word to a larger audience about events that are happening.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This is my first UX design project, and so throughout these 2 weeks I learned the UX design process and started right away on this project. My main takeaway was how important user input is, from the research process to the user testing portion -- finding the user pain points can make the design process much more straight-forward as the goal is clearer.
IMPROVEMENTS/FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS
Reflecting on this case study, there are a few things that I would love to work on and change:
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Integration: This product, if implemented, would work better through integrating it into the user's current processes -- changing the behavior of a whole user population can be extremely hard. Thus, possibly integrating it into a Wechat extension, the #1 social media application in China, would allow for an easier implementation + seamless transition.
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User-specific Designs + Maintenance: If I had more time, I would have designed a more fleshed-out design, including user flows for both students that were looking to find clubs, but also those who were in charge of maintaining and running clubs. This would mean creating a user persona, understanding their specific needs, and creating a front-facing and back-facing interface.
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Something very important to note for the longevity of this product is also maintenance -- if I had more time, I would have took into account ways that club leaders could easily maintain and update their information, so that the product can be used for long after they leave the school as well.
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