Designing for International Students

Project Format: Design Jam
Role: Ideation, Interviewer, Design, Sketching, Presentation
Time Span: November 6, 2019 (1.5 hours)
Task: Create a design that would help international students find support in their new communities

I was one of 50 students selected to participate in a design jam hosted by Airbnb. A design jam is an event where teams of students are presented with a task and are given a set amount of time to design a solution to the problem the task entails. The task for this design jam was ‘Create a design that would help international students find support in their new communities’. This was all the information we were given, and it was ambiguous what kind of support or grade of international students we were to focus on. We had 90 minutes to come up with a design and present it to the Airbnb team.

Research and Ideation

I was randomly assigned to a team of 8 people. The first thing my team did was understand the task as much as we could. To get our minds flowing, I suggested that every individual write quick sticky notes on how they define ‘support’ and ‘communities’, along with characteristics of international students. These sticky notes were then transferred onto a wall and we started clustering based on trends and patterns. After some clustering, I noticed that the affinity notes under ‘support’ consisted mostly of needs that international students have. I decided it made the most sense for the team to organize these notes following Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and see which level had the most types of support international students needed. We then realized that the most support needed was in the third level, which pertains to a sense of social belonging. Through this process, our team was able to move on quickly.

Our team was lucky enough to have three international students with us. I conducted an interview on one of them to better understand what needs and pain points she had when she first arrived in her new community, which was Ann Arbor, MI in this case. After interviewing all three international students and synthesizing the responses, we noticed that all international students had one thing in common: they all wished they had one solid connection with someone coming into Ann Arbor so they wouldn’t feel completely isolated. This led us to our design problem statement:

How might we establish one personal connection for a new incoming international university student?

The final stage consisted of paper prototyping, persona building, and storyboarding. Our solution was a mobile application that matches together incoming international students based on their area of study, interests/hobbies, and goals with the application. To build this personal connection, users collaboratively raise a digital pet of their choosing together. My design role was to create the match-making interface. The application was named PetPals which includes the following features:

• The user can input similar interests they want their partner to have

• Users can gain points (which increases the health and happiness of their pet) by going to social events or doing activities with their partner

• Partners can collaborate with other pairs’ pets to further build a community

• Users can decide which type of digital animal they wish to raise

Discussion

Since the event only lasted 90 minutes and the task was focused more on design, there was a limitation on time spent on ideation and research. The interview I conducted was short and to save time, an interview protocol wasn’t produced. Interview synthesis was done mostly through discussion and was done quickly. Typically, interviews would be transcribed and affinity notes would be written from responses to better identify patterns and pain points. To save time, we focused on the first similarity we had with our three interviews.

The paper prototype presented was the first iteration of the application, as there was enough time for only one. Typically, prototyping is an iterative process and involves multiple rounds of usability testing.

The goal of PetPals was to solidify one personal connection before students arrive in their new communities so they can arrive knowing they will have at least one person to interact with. Once the relationship becomes well-established, it’s possible that the partners will abandon the application. Upon reflection, I’d want the application to facilitate relationship-building with different students after arrival as well.

Explore my other projects:

IHPI Recycle King Halcyon Consulting

arycus@umich.edu | 734.926.6961