Description: The purpose of project 1 is to repurpose the robots that roam Purdue’s campus daily: Starships. Our goal was to explore Purdue student’s attitudes toward the robots and its automated delivery in order to come up with a system or use for Starship that goes above and beyond their current uses to produce new kinds of human-human connections. In this project we are aiming to learn about the UX process through affinity diagramming, conducting interviews, outlining scenarios, and making mental models in order to help expand the use of Starships across Purdue’s campus.

My Goals:

1. Practice conducting proper interviews.
2. Understand more of the UX design.
3. Practice drawing affinity diagrams and mental models.
4. Improve drawing clear scenarios and storyboards.

Project Process

1. Figure out the problem statement.
2. Design a solution.
3. Start primary and secondary research.
4. Collect data through interviews.
5. Create storyboards/scenarios.
6. Develop a concluding statement.

Problem Statement: First-year Purdue students who get sick often struggle to know how to take care of themselves in a way that protects the people around them.

Our affinity diagram for our interview studies

UX design process = Project process

Design Question: How can we create a care package for sick, first-year Purdue students that will provide them with the necessary tools to combat common illnesses found on college campuses?

Solution

We have designed a Starship package delivery service where Starships can go to multiple places and pick up the necessary items for Purdue student’s health. This service would have its own storefront where Purdue students can pick their desired package pertaining to the specific illness they might be suffering from. We have specially curated packages from a Flu care package to a Covid-19 care package. The Starship would be programmed to make multiple stops, making it an easy, one-click solution for students who are sick and unsure how to treat their illness.

The Starships would start their journey at PUSH, which would be their central location. From there, they can be sanitized and an illness-specific care card is placed inside. The Starship then would have the ability to go to other on-campus sites such as the 3rd Street market and other campus retail locations to obtain the desired items in each order. Each care package then can be customized to the customer’s liking and would include a care card providing the student with specific instructions to help them recover properly.

Research

Secondary Research: After defining and figuring out our problem statement we began our research. Each of us researched articles related to the topics of Starship robots, college campus illness, and six specific illnesses we wanted to focus on: cold, covid, flu, stomach bug, sinus infection, and mono.

Our findings from our secondary research covered areas like:

1. Why college students are more prone to sickness/what illnesses are most common.
2. What supplies would be needed for these common illnesses.
3. Basic information pertaining to Starships and their current-day function.

College students generally are more likely to get sick because they are in such close quarters with a variety of people on campus, their lifestyle choices- lack of sleep and healthy foods- cause student’s immune systems to become more illness-prone. Additionally in cooler places like West Lafayette, students are walking around for extensive periods of time in the cold weather and generally don’t prepare themselves well for those times.

My Thoughts: After doing all of the research for this project, I learned so much about different types of illnesses college kids often get on campus. My learning includes the mental aspect as well as the physical aspect. I believe that this project, and the upcoming solution, will be very useful because from my personal experience, when I got sick on campus, I personally didn’t know what was wrong with me from the symptoms and I had to call my mom at first to get answers.

The 6 illnesses we focused on and the items that would go in each care package.

• Cold
• Flu
• Covid
• Sinus infection
• Stomach Bug
• Mono

Data: Interviews

After researching, we moved on to data, with each team member conducting an interview. ****We discovered general student feelings about Starships as well as sentiments about illnesses on campus. Most students relied on their parents and were confused on what items they needed to recover from their illness. In addition, we uncovered protocols on how the current Starship system operated, including the fact that fleets of Starships are not shared amongst restaurants but rather are allocated to each store. Students also expressed to us general discomfort around high fee pricing and paying extra to have the item delivered. We also did additional observations of the Starships in action.

My Thoughts: From this part of the process, I learned more about how to conduct a proper interview with a certain protocol template. I gained more knowledge on other people’s experience with dealing with sickness on campus and the overall learning about Starships was very insightful.

Prototyping: Scenarios

After acquiring our data and research, we started prototyping, which means having all of us create scenarios and storyboards that enhances the human-to human interaction.

Scenario:

1. Purdue student wakes up nauseous and is alone as their roommate left to go to class. The student is unable to leave the dorm and is vomiting.
2. After hearing about the care package system from a friend, the sick Purdue student opens up the Starship app and clicks on the package that they wants.
3. The Starship visits its locations and workers place items into Starship. Then it heads to sick Purdue student’s location.
4. As the Starship makes its away around the locations, students walking around the starship can scan the QR on the robot and sends Get Well messages.
5. The sick Purdue student receives notification that its Starship is at Harrison Hall. The Purdue student receives care items from the robot and messages from the app. The sick Purdue student finally has the necessary care items to start feeling better.

My thoughts: I learned when creating scenarios that it is very important to make them clear and easy to follow for the viewer because they are very helpful to use and see the vision for your design.

A scenario I drew for our project

Affordance diagram of the Starship care package design

Individual contribution: In this project overall, my contributions included finding several research articles as well as summarizing all of them when we did a literature review in class. Adding on to the research I found the information of the items need to cure each specific illness (which would later be included in the package). I conducted one interview and submitted the data in our collaboration space. I helped make scenarios and storyboards for our team and helped with many in-class activities. I helped with the conclusion aspect in the documentation and a couple of slides for our presentation.

Reflection: After completing this project, I found the whole process we went through, to be very interesting, challenging in some ways, and even enlightening. Going into my research and the interview it was very enlightening of the experience people have with sickness on campus. Over the last couple weeks, I have learned how important primary research and secondary research is in the design process. I found the literature review very helpful in finding additional secondary research sources and information that can be added to our documentation. I loved working on the scenarios and storyboards because I feel like that is where my skills shine.