UX Practices.

Repurposing StarShips

This project consisted of myself and group members Zim Seely, Pallavi Tulpule, Mack Moore, Jiwon Seo expanding on Starship delivery robots to increase human-human interaction (HHI). We worked with the current design space, utilizing ideation sketches, interviews/user feedback, and storyboarding to create our final design.

User selects “Host a New Game.”

User selects “Host a New Game.”

User selects open time slot in desired game room.

User selects open time slot in desired game room.

Front desk is alerted of reservation. Receptionist stocks starship with reserved game.

Front desk is alerted of reservation. Receptionist stocks starship with reserved game.

Public/Private game room chats alert members of game, room, and play time.

Public/Private game room chats alert members of game, room, and play time.

Game bot starship is packed with game and tablet including directions for game play.

Game bot starship is packed with game and tablet including directions for game play.

Students arrive at reserved location.

Students arrive at reserved location.

Students check in for game via game bot app.

Students check in for game via game bot app.

Starship arrives. Students use app to open starship and retrieve game. Starship will remain for 10 minutes so students can review game directions on tablet.

Starship arrives. Students use app to open starship and retrieve game. Starship will remain for 10 minutes so students can review game directions on tablet.

Students enjoy gameplay and interactivity. Once finished, students can end session to request starship to pick up game.

Students enjoy gameplay and interactivity. Once finished, students can end session to request starship to pick up game.

Students send required image of game and pieces to front desk worker to maintain the game’s condition.

Students send required image of game and pieces to front desk worker to maintain the game’s condition.

Starship opens, and student places game pieces in the bot.

Starship opens, and student places game pieces in the bot.

The End.

The End.

Project Scope

The scope of this project is to redesign Starships - typically used as food delivery systems - in a way that produces new kinds of human-human connections. Students must utilize Purdue student attitudes toward current starships to create unique delivery systems that goes beyond food service.

Design Space

The team wanted to focus on dormitory spaces on the Purdue campus, particularly a place where mostly underclassmen reside. We chose McCutcheon Hall, home to hundreds of Purdue freshmen as our testing space. McCutcheon Hall is already set up with a Resident Advisor and plenty of board games students can rent out, making it an optimal design space for our project. Our persona consists of freshmen at Purdue who are looking to meet new people through playing board games.

Goals

The goal for our project was to increase human-human interaction through the starship delivery system in ways that forge in-person connections for people with similar interests or a way to meet other students.

Primary Research

Article Reviews

Article reviews on the current design space were performed by all group members. We utilized this research to begin formulating questions to ask participants in interviews.

  • This case study focuses on the user experience of mobile food ordering. While our project proposal will not end up focusing on the food aspect of delivery, getting input from users on the app space is important for getting any sort of delivery. The researcher performed sets of interviews and analysis during the case study to determine some "pain points" for users with mobile ordering is "time, ease of use, language barrier, and accessibility." He learned that hunger could alter our abilities to carry out certain actions with ease - including what we would think is a simple app framework. This is another example of how user input is critical to developing a product, since we as the creators perceive our work in a different light. The designer takes readers through his design process step-by-step, concluding that we as designers need to cater to the uniqueness of individual buyers and emphasizes the importance of user input throughout the design process.

    Link: https://artora.design/blog/designing-a-food-delivery-appa-ux-case-study

  • This article delves into the rise of robotics as a method for food delivery, as well as upcoming technologies that could further enhance the convenience of the process. Robot delivery systems like Starship can carry up to 10 kg of weight and are used for grocery pickup and restaurant takeout. A lot of large food delivery companies are entering this market, including Uber, Amazon, and DoorDash. As they are introduced to city landscapes, companies are able to utilize robot services to lower the added costs of food delivery, especially because the robots don't accept tips as drivers would. These improvements in technology come at the stake of employing millions of people in the food delivery industry. Proponents of these robots claim the industry is actually creating more jobs, and only takes on short distance deliveries that drivers tend to turn down anyway. Major benefits in robot delivery include accessibility for the disabled, increased transportation of food for local businesses, and reduced delivery costs.

    Link: https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2022/04/self-driving-robots-a-revolution-in-the-local-delivery/

Interview Analysis

  • https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hPaqqeYHeenfjw4-vwhvT1z87ak3ce4p/view?usp=drive_link

  • Hello ______. Thanks for taking time out of your day to discuss with me about starships on campus. This interview will take at most 20 minutes. Is that ok with you?

    My name is _____, I am a student here at Purdue University and am conducting this interview to aid in my understanding of starship usage on campus. Do I have your permission to record this interview? It will be used only to analyze and re-listen to your answers. Your information will remain anonymous throughout the entire process. Wait for an answer (if they say no it’s over)

    As a reminder before we begin, there are no wrong answers and you can choose to not answer any questions that you do not wish to.

    • Have you ordered food using a Purdue starship before?

      • When? (Preface season)

      • Where did you order from? What did you order?

      • How often do you use Starship?

      • How long did it take for the food to get to your location?

      • How far were you from the restaurant you ordered from?

    • Are you an on-campus or off-campus student?

    • Did you have any problems with the delivery or service?

    • Did the food arrive in the expected condition?

    • Have you used any special features offered by the starships? (i.e. tracking, song choice, etc.)

    • Was it worth the added cost of having the starship deliver the food?

    • How many times have you used Starship?

      • Would you use it again?

      • Why or why not?

      • What alternatives do you use to order food?

        • Do you prefer these alternatives? Why or why not?

    • Do you have any other types of experience with starships that may be relevant to this interview?

    Thank you for your time and participation in this interview.

All team members conducted individual interviews in preparation for ideation. The script utilized for interviews was developed as a group.

The team utilized an affinity diagram to determine what factors into the average use of a starship, indicating what is common, liked, and disliked among starship interactions. From our sorting, we identified pain points, liked features, delivery time, and reason of order.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Delivery takes too long / is not always consistent with what the app says

  • Main reasons for ordering starship revolved around bad weather or not wanting to walk somewhere

  • Music and other cool features were aspects people liked about starship

  • App sometimes glitches or marks starship in different location than where it actually is

Initial Design Ideas

  • The group produced a number of ideas that held potential to increase HHI through the utilization of starships. I introduced the idea of a book exchange starship, a sort of mobile library students could utilize to find new books they were interested in reading or give away books they no longer needed. While this idea had merit, we chose a different direction because we wanted a more succinct user group that could be tested in a smaller location.

  • Another idea thrown around was a starship which showcased the artwork of Purdue students through holographic display. To increase HHI, we wanted to implement a way to scan a QR code to learn about the artist and upcoming events where their art would be shown. Another aspect of this design was allowing people to purchase prints directly from the starship. We moved on from this ideation due to its minimal efforts to increase HHI.

  • The team landed on the idea of a gaming starship as a result of user feedback and finding a good user group to hone in on. The team believes the ideal target audience to gain HHI from this starship are Purdue University dorm residents looking to meet new people. We found this best served the purpose of this assignment, utilized user feedback to confirm people would find this idea appealing, and moved toward design evaluation.

As we moved forward with our gaming starship, we generated a number of designs that could build on our ideations and work better based on user feedback. We wanted to start with a smaller user group to test the effectiveness of our design. McCutcheon Hall of Purdue University - the largest dorm on campus - was the perfect test location.

Design Expansion

We wanted the following characteristics implemented in our design:

  • An app to reserve time slots and invite players

  • QR Code on the bot to guide users to app

  • The ability to join other people’s sessions through app

  • The starship brings games to user

  • This increases human to human interaction by providing more opportunities to meet new people

Design Evaluation

  • [Zim Seely] This interview was conducted over the phone. We asked the current front desk worker questions regarding how board games were checked out as well as how often people would rent board games. Some key findings from this interview were:

    • Board games can be checked out at the front desk or through an RA

    • Board games are checked out by students almost every weekend

    • There are a wide variety of board games that are available

    • Most games are checked out and there are not any that are never used

  • [Zim Seely] This interview was conducted in person. We asked the former RA questions about his experience with residents checking out board games. Some key findings from this interview were:

    • Board games are frequently checked out through the RA

    • In his experience, the same people usually checked out games on the same nights of the week

    • There were rarely new people that would check out games from him

    We also asked this former RA what they thought of our initial design regarding the board game starship application and he had one major concern.

  • After gathering this information, we were able to use it within our scenarios and within our design evaluation. We will discuss within the evaluation section of this paper how exactly the feedback from these interviews were used within our design process and what changes they led to within our design. Overall, these secondary interviews were helpful in crafting our final design and allowed us to further explore the design space as well as different perspectives and needs of each user group we interviewed. These interviews were extremely helpful when making sure that we had as much context as possible as a team when finalizing our design.

Secondary Interviews

“I probably would have used the games more often if it wasn’t a hassle to get them.” - Former Resident

“My biggest concern would be making sure all the game pieces were returned.” - Former RA in charge of checking out dorm games

“It would be cool if the starship had a role in the game or something.” - Former Resident

In order to further improve our design our team came up with some “worst case” scenarios in order to discover and fix weak points of our design. This section will explain a scenario, and then list the changes made to our design in order to fix the issues presented. This was done towards the end of our design process once we had honed in on a design idea we really liked. These scenarios were generated both internally from our team's ideas and through feedback given to us from interviews. The scenarios are as follows:

Scenarios

Scenario 1: NO ONE SHOWS UP

This scenario is one in which an individual schedules a public game to be played at 5:00 pm within the dorm. People sign up to join the game, but when 5pm rolls around no one shows. The user is left feeling more alone than before and this will definitely place a bad light on the design overall.

In order to fix the issue shown within the scenario we decided to implement a mandatory RSVP window as well as a no show fee. The RSVP window will close an hour before the game and members are expected to confirm that they will be in attendance or select that they will not be there for the game. If a user confirms their attendance and then does not show up to the game, there will be a fee charged to them for a no show. This change in our design will hopefully reduce the amount of people that do not show up for a game and thus will increase human to human interaction.

Scenario 2: MISSING PIECES / DAMAGE

This scenario is one in which a group of people have met up for their board game session, the bot brings them the game, but there are either missing pieces or the instructions are missing/damaged. This will result in the group not being able to play the game and they will most likely all go home which would result in less human to human interaction.

In order to fix the issue of missing pieces, we decided to implement a requirement when turning back in the board game. Users must submit a photo of the game with all the pieces in order for the starship to return to the front desk with the game. Users will also be able to report missing pieces if they notice any when receiving the game. This will help prevent missing pieces from happening and affecting others .

In order to fix the issue of damaged or missing directions, we decided to place a removable tablet within the bot that will display the directions of the game to the users. This is great for people who may not know how to play a certain game and the instructions are missing. These updates to our design will make sure that students will always be able to play and pieces are not missing at any point in the process

These scenarios helped us gain more context and look at our design from different user perspectives. When paired with our secondary interviews, it really helped us tune in our design so that we could make it increase human to human interaction to the best of our ability. The next section, evaluations, will dive into more detail and changes that we made to the bot based on both our interviews and scenarios.

The first instance of feedback that led to a change in our design was from a former RA of McCutcheon Hall. When asked about the design as a whole, he stated:

Summarizing Implementation of User Feedback + Scenarios

“My biggest concern would be making sure all the game pieces were returned.”

This led us to edit our design of the mobile app that was associated with the starship boardgame service. Now, in order to return a game, the user who checked out the game must submit a photo on the app of the game with all required pieces present. We also implemented the ability to report missing pieces of a game on the app as well. We decided to incorporate these aspects of the app directly because of the former RA’s feedback as he was once in a position of authority relative to board game usage within McCutcheon.

In another interview, with a student that used to live in a resident hall, when asked their opinion on our design they stated:

“It would be cool if the starship had a role in the game or something.”

This led us to try and find ways we could incorporate the bot itself within the user game experience. After brainstorming as a team, we decided that the bot itself could contain a tablet that would display game rules as well as a card shuffler on top of the bot that could be detached and help users shuffle and distribute cards. Not only did these ideas make the bot more interactive within the user’s game experience, but they can also be helpful for those who may have disabilities and find it hard to shuffle cards. The tablet with the game rules would also be helpful as frequent use of games can lead to the rules paper being damaged, lost, or completely destroyed.

Along with this user feedback, we also incorporated our worst-case scenario in order to add characteristics to our app. From our worst-case scenario and other ideas being generated, we added the following elements to our design:

Mandatory RSVP feature to avoid no shows

  • No show penalty fee

  • Private games (Invite only)

  • Public games (Open to all)

Next Steps

Usability testing within McCutcheon 

  • Test in other dorms and see how design needs to be updated

  • Gather user feedback from students and faculty

What we would do with more time:

  • Further develop aspects of the app (Party Type, Reporting Users, Different game locations) 

  • Conduct more interviews with current dorm residents and RAs

  • Gather research on popular games in order to better optimize user experience and flow of app