ConverStation

Introduction

In college, we are surrounded by so many people, each of whom has a story. Many have experiences close to our own, others have wisdom to share, and some even have world views that span the globe.

That said, it's sometimes awkward to approach strangers and start conversations, especially if they might be busy.

Our solution is an app that pairs you with other members of your college community for in-person conversations, when they are available and nearby. It's a safe, low-pressure way to fit meeting new people into your busy schedule.

To learn more about how our app might work for you, try our prototypes!

Medium-Fidelity Prototype
High-Fidelity Prototype

Our Team

Jake Ray, Fiona Hall-Zazueta, Eli Vasquez, & David Rathmann-Bloch

We came together in Stanford's Intro to Human-Computer Interaction class (Computer Science 147), taught by Professor Landay in fall 2019.

Jake is our Chief Technical Officer. With programming skills and a passion for design, they built a strong technical foundation for the application.

Fiona is our Head of Product Design. Her formidable work ethic and deep understanding of user interface design and her passion for frameworks made using our app a much better experience.

Eli is our Managing Director. His wisdom and perseverance helped our team overcome significant logistical and programming challenges.

David is our Head of Web Development. He spearheaded this website and made essential contributions to the needfinding process.

Our Process

To develop this prototype application, we followed the design thinking paradigm from Intro to Human-Computer Interaction at Stanford. There were a number of steps involved, from reaching out to potential users in the educational technology space, to brainstorming ideas, to giving and receiving feedback on intermediate prototypes. Finally, we coded up more detailed, digital prototypes near the end of the course.

1. Needfinding 2. Experience Prototype 3. Concept Video 4. Low-Fi Prototype

5. Medium-Fi Prototype 6. Heuristic Evaluation 7. Hi-Fi Prototype 8. Poster

Here are some statistics on the winding road we took through this project:

20 Participants Interviewed.
349 Files so far, including photos, videos, code and writeups.
45 "How Might We" statements for possible goals.
6,277 Megabytes of audio and video content for the concept video.
One High-Fidelity Prototype.

1. Needfinding

To figure out what problems we might try to solve, our first step was to interview a variety of users in the education technology space. Initially, we planned to focus on education, but over time, our project focus pivoted toward communication in the university etting. We conducted structured intervews with nine diverse participants, including a humanities professor, two elementary-school students, and a retired programmer who takes physics courses online. The results of these interviews informed our process going forward.

Needfinding Presentation (PDF)

Needfinding Presentation (online)

↑ Back to Our Process Next Step ↓

2. Experience Prototyping and Ideation

Once we had conducted interviews, we decided to narrow our focus down towards the experience of interacting with fellow students. We conducted additional interviews, and used the information we gathered from those interviews to help us brainstorm possible topics for our project. Finally, we tested our assumptions out on members of the public by asking them to play out the scenarios we thought about in our brainstorm.

This stage was vital to our application design, as it allowed us to think about the subjective experiences that we wanted to evoke or create, rather than diving immediately into the application itself.

Writeup of our Ideation and Needfinding (PDF)

Experience Prototyping Presentation (PDF)

Experience Prototyping Presentation (online)

↑ Back to Our Process Next Step ↓

3. Concept Video

Now that we had come up with some experiences, it was time to choose a solution idea. We decided to explore making it easier to make intellectual and social connections within the university, as we noticed that, when it was present, a sense of community really helped people stay motivated academically and flourish in their classes. Our app would serve as (non-romantic) matchmaker, and in using it, people would be able to meet each other and have short conversations. We filmed a brief concept video, which you can watch below. There are also some slides that describe our process.

Concept Video Slides (PDF)

Concept Video Slides (online)

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4. Low-Fidelity Prototype

After making the concept video, we made a paper prototype showing all the UI elements our app would have. The purpose of this prototype was to see how members of the public might interact with an app like this, and to correct any major UI blunders while it was still easy to revise. We then tested it with several people, who provided us with useful feedback.

Low-Fidelity Prototype Slides

Here is a PDF presentation about the low-fidelity prototype. It includes diagrams and discussion of our techniques.
Click here for online version.
Low-Fidelity Prototype Writeup

Here is our writeup, which goes into detail on our methodology for the first half of the project.

↑ Back to Our Process Next Step ↓

5. Medium-Fidelity Prototype

Next, we designed an interactive, online prototype using Figma. The medium-fidelity prototype is a usable demo of the key functionality of ConverStation, and it is available on our website. As is the nature of a medium-fidelity prototype, we focused significantly on the user interface. To make it clearer to use, we greatly simplified what buttons and pop-ups were available, focusing primarily on screens indicating navigation and conversation status.

Medium-Fidelity Prototype Slides

Here is a PDF presentation about the medium-fi prototype. It includes diagrams and discussion of our techniques.
Click here for online version.
Medium-Fidelity Prototype

The medium-fidelity prototype is a usable demo of some of the key functionality of ConverStation. It doesn't reflect our final design, but it shows our design process. You can use it right in your browser.
Medium-Fidelity Prototype Readme

Here is our readme, which explains how to use the medium-fidelity prototype.

↑ Back to Our Process Next Step ↓

6. Heuristic Evaluation

After we designed and internally tested our medium-fidelity prototype, several classmates who normally worked on different projects were kind enough to test our prototype and supply us with copious feedback. The report, available below, details the usability violations the evaluators found in our Medium-Fidelity Prototype. We tried to address these violations in our High-Fidelity Prototype.

↑ Back to Our Process Next Step ↓

7. High-Fidelity Prototype

With the knowledge gained from the heuristic evaluation, we got to work on the High-Fidelity Prototype. This is a downloadable app for Android phones, programmed using Android Studio. Details of changes and improvements are available below; the bulk of the changes involved the labeling of tasks and flows.

Midway Milestone Presentation (PDF)

Midway Milestone Presentation (Online)

Download the Hi-Fi Prototype for Andoid (.apk)

Hi-Fi Writeup PDF

Hi-Fi Writeup (online)