Problem Statement

Of the 1.4 million students who study at Canadian Universities, 10% move provinces to, and another 10% originate from outside of Canada. These students often relocate with a limited or non-existent social, professional, or other type of network in their new city. This can lead to feelings of isolation contributing to higher levels of mental illness, poor university experience, academic performance, attrition, Expressions of gratitude can help nurture community and help form deep and meaningful connections - absolving such feelings of isolation and subsequent effects.

In this project we designed a solution which helps lower social barriers, allowing for more gratitude sharing between students to foster community and minimize feelings of isolation.

   

 

Formative evaluation

 

During a Brain Sketching exercise was really where a lot of our formative ideas and feedback took place. With the exercise, each of us created an idea and direction for our design and then collaboratively added onto and improved each design. Through this exercise, we could plainly see where each individual member was coming from conceptually and we were able to give real-time feedback that allowed each member to hone in on an effective and more developed idea. A lot of the inspiration for our final kit ideas came from this brain sketching exercise.

 

       

Personas

Primary Persona: The person who would be using the gratitude solution

Secondary Persona: The person who would be on the receiving end of the solution

Goals

	Build a support system to help her achieve success
	Build stronger connections to combat loneliness from moving
	Express more gratitude as a way of building more meaningful connections

Scenario

Rachel has a huge test coming up and is feeling stressed. She’s been studying for a long time but is stuck on one problem and is starting to feel overwhelmed. To help with the problem, she asks a classmate for help the classmate was able to explain the problem in a way that made sense to Rachel. She is very thankful for the classmate’s help and wants a way to express her gratitude in a more meaningful way but she doesn’t know how to do so. She also thinks this is a perfect opportunity to deepen her connection with the classmate.

Storyboard

 

 

 

 

Prototype Overview

The prototype product is a selection of physical kits that users can order online, pick up, and craft at home or within a workshop space. Based on user selection, the kits contain items from a wide range of ordinary hand-crafting tools and materials such as scissors, glues, cutting papers, stickers, and gift wraps. The considerations behind this design are to make it cheap, affordable, eco-friendly, easy to use while providing great customizable for users to apply their creativity and personal preference. The fun and collaborative culture of casual crafting combined with its dedicated, innovative incentive should have the effect of mitigating social awkwardness, increasing bond, and deliver the intended gratitude in an always personal and unique way. It is important to keep in mind that the video prototype represents the horizontal design of our product at an earlier point which only demonstrates an envisioned process of use. The actual product features and services will be actualized and diversified in our redesign stage.

 

 

 

Feedback

• Confusion as to the content of the kit. Many participants were unclear on the contents and variations of the kit, and worried there weren’t options that would relate to their own ways of expressing gratitude.  

• Some users we interviewed pushed back against the idea in its entirety – they considered it a “silly idea” that they would never use. When asked for clarification, they explained that it was contrary to their own ideas about expressing gratitude, and that they wouldn’t require help. Given that our target users were those who had trouble expressing gratitude, this seems to affirm who we aren’t targeting.  

• Kit suggestions were solicited, in the hopes of ensuring we could cover a wider range of products. This also informed our v2 Prototype, which covers a wider array of domains.

  • We had hoped including multiple products in the video was enough to showcase different kits, but our prototype was not clear.

       

Redesign

The original focus was on traditional crafting kits, such as drawing, sticker-making, painting, and cards. Given the feedback from potential users that it was quite limited and felt it was limited to just ‘crafters’ and excluded other forms of expression and gratitude. Given this feedback we’ve expanded out kit selections to a much broader sense of “hand made” to include different versions and concepts of creativity. These lend themselves to a more inclusive set of gratitude gift kits

Iteration 1

Iteration 2

       

Concluding thoughts and future work

Looking Forward

Some areas we would like to include in future interactions of this design progroject include:

1. User interviews and input for those with disabilities or accessibility concerns on how we can make both the kits themselves as well as the process of ordering, picking up, and making more inclusive
2. Currently kits are designed for those at a beginner or intermediate level of the craft itself, we would want to expand to accommodate those at a more advanced skill level
3. Improve the usability of the ordering app, and include additional functionality including feedback or reviews for each of the kits.

Conclusions