SHARE is a dedicated space for student mentoring.
A collaborative peer mentoring space that provides information access and opportunity for education that may not otherwise be readily available as a Northeastern student. After conducting research and analyzing the best way to provide this resource to students, we decided on creating a physical space. We represented this in SketchUp, and designed the screens to be presented in the space.
Making informal knowledge at Northeastern University visible.
Timeline
Background Research
Affinity Diagram
Observational Studies
Interviews, Surveys
Personas
Alignment Diagram
3D Model of Space
Mockups of Informational Screen
4 weeks, December 2019
Team
Tools
3 UX Designers
Experience Design, Northeastern University
Adobe XD
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
SketchUp
The Challenge
We want to create a space of informal knowledge sharing among undergraduate students.
This provided a challenge because How do you uncover answers to questions you might not realize you have? In my experiences, I had met a lot of great mentors who told me about amazing opportunities that I was completely unaware about. In some cases, I found about these opportunities too late. I wanted to be able to pass on advice to underclassmen. I became a TA for incoming CS majors; however, I was only able to pass on these opportunities to about 50 students. Moreover, my advice was often specific to Design combined majors.
I wanted this space to be a way to find out about opportunities students may not otherwise be aware of, but also a place they can ask questions about student life, specific courses or classes, local places in Boston they have to try… anything, really.
After discussions among my team and our initial background research, we came to the conclusion that the way to uncover answers to questions you might not realize you have is through informal conversations. We needed to provide this space among students, where underclassmen can go to seek this advice and upperclassmen can go to pass on what they learned - or more importantly, wish they had known sooner - to their peers.
Project Origins
In our early explorations into establishing an idea for our final project, we each pitched three individual ideas. One revolving around the MBTA, another involving the the organization of health information, and another involving a centralized coursework platform for Northeastern students. Through discussion, we established that we, in a way, wanted to create an organization of centralization information for Northeastern students. We then organized an activity to help establish what students need the most.
Research
Background Research
We researched each individual college at Northeastern and their peer mentorship programs. As each college functions on their own, with their own website, we found a problem with how there is no comprehensive site for information for all students.
We researched how to create a collaborative space, as well as a space for knowledge sharing, and what colors, type of furniture, and layout to use.
We sent out a survey to our peers to find out whether they were aware of the peer mentorship program within their own college and whether they would participate in ours.
Affinity Diagram
To start our design journey, we invited five of our friends to conduct an affinity diagramming activity. We created a loose prompt to initiate idea generation without being too guiding. We told the participants to write anything that came to mind when they thought about “Northeastern Student Resources.”
We then took the results and organized them based on the following categories: Negative Emotions, Negative Experiences, People, Lacking Knowledge, Spaces/Establishments, and Positive Experiences.
Conclusion
The activity helped us establish that we were on the right track, that other students faced similar problems. We wanted to focus primarily on the lack of information dissemination to students regarding opportunities both academically and professionally. This is an issue we all as a group have experienced as well.
Next Steps
The affinity diagram led us to three paths of exploration. We initially jumped to the idea of creating an online web based platform/website to collate all information but due to the technical aspects of this pitch we decided this may have been to complex of a task to access the backends of many other existing websites to pull in information. We then moved to the potential idea of having a town hall forum set up to initiate information distribution and foster informal conversations. Refining both of those ideas, we came up with the idea of dedicated space for student mentoring.
Personas
Giannis
He is a 1st year from Beaverton, Oregon, and he isn’t sure if he wants to study Computer Science or Poly Sci. He is currently enrolled at Northeastern as a Computer Science major with a Poly Sci minor, because he wants to focus on CS, but wants to explore other options. Johnson has tried to speak to his advisor about not being sure of what he wants to study, but his advisor said that he has to take care of too many students to focus on Johnson specifically.
Carlos is trying to figure out what classes he will need to take as major requirements, but also wants to find classes that will complement his major and minor well. He has been talking to his friends on their opinions, but he would really value the opinions and experiences of older upperclassmen in his area of study. Additionally, Johnson wants to get involved with organizations like Scout so that he can practice his developer skills, but doesn’t know where to go for advice on applying.
Johnson’s main issue is that because he is so young, he is having trouble finding older people in his areas of study to reach out to for advice on classes and other experiences, like dialogues. He wishes that there was some way for his to easily reach out to older, more experienced students for questions, or just to engage in informal conversations with.
Jasmine
She is a 3rd year from Long Island, New York, and came to Northeastern for its focus on experiential learning and values that push students to explore their various interests. She entered Northeastern as a business major, but decided to switch into the Business Administration and Experience Design combined major in her 2nd year.
Jasmine decided to make this change after going on a dialogue in Southern Africa, where she took design classes like Experience Design I and Design Process Context Systems. She found out about this dialogue from one of her teachers, and was really glad that she found out about it when she did. She is interested in learning more about opportunities to join organizations on campus like Husky Ambassadors and Generate. Most on campus opportunities she knows of she learns about through word of mouth. One thing she wished that she knew about sooner is the Experience Design Graduate Program.
However, it’s also November and it’s time for Jasmine to start registering for classes, and she feels a little lost in what classes to take and with what teachers. She usually researches professors through Rate My Professor, but found that teachers she found reviews for this year did not turn out the way she wanted them to. Jasmine prefers to have informal conversations with other students and ask about their experiences because she values real honest student opinion over anything else.
Jon
He is a 4th year from Germany and is a Communications and English combined major. He has had both positive and negative experiences within his colleges of study, and wanted to engage with the community so enrolled in the SHARE program. Jon stops for a large iced coffee on his way to his SHARE shifts and often stays there for several hours so that he can provide as much help to students that come in as possible. He often encourages other students from different colleges and majors to talk to him and other mentors, not just their in-house college mentor. He knows that each student has their own experiences and connections to other friends, professors, and advisors who he may be able to refer them to, if he can’t help, himself.
On the weekends, Jon also loves to explore the city of Boston. One of his favorite things to do is take the Orange Line over to Chinatown with his friends to get soup dumplings and go karaoke-ing in the theater district. In addition to giving academic advice, Jon also seeks to act as a general mentor to students that come in and also share his experiences with the city of Boston, providing good tips and sites to see around the area.
Alignment Diagram
The Space
We needed a physical space for these informal conversations.
Talking face to face, making conversation… not only makes it easier for the student seeking advice, but it may inspire helpful information to come up naturally. This is why it wouldn’t work as a mobile app, a website, or some online platform. Often, the kind of information and opportunities are specific to the individual. Talking about interests and experiences is what will lead to opportunities for them. If the mentor doesn’t know how to help the individual, they can refer them to another mentor or a friend with a similar background or interests.
Based on research colors, creating a collaborative space, and a space for knowledge sharing, we focused on the following:
Natural Lighting
The window not only helps with this, but also encourages students on campus to come in.
Color Scheme
Orange creates comfort, blends the physical red and the emotional yellow.
Yellow is emotional, stimulating creativity, friendliness, optimism, and confidence
Green provides balance, harmony, & restoration
Similar layout and furniture to those around campus, in Snell Library and Curry Student Center.
Round tables for each college to have a space to encourage communication among students.
Alternative spaces for sitting casually, benches along wall.
Availability of conference room, for more private conversations.
Neon SHARE light and branding to emphasize the this is the students’ community space.
The Screen
Mockups of our Screen
The idea is to project this interactive screen in the room. The left panel is to sign in immediately with an available mentor for an informal discussion.
To speak to someone specific or of a specific college, the student can sign in online and schedule an appointment or look at the student’s walk-in hours.
Twitter Page
The right side of the screen presents information based on what was shared in previous conversations. Conversations and questions with mentors that lead to uncovering an opportunity or great pieces of advice, will be reflected here for other students to be able to see as well.
We also created a Twitter page.
This served two main purposes:
This gives students an idea of what they can ask when they come in. Reading other students’ questions can help them figure out more about what kind of information they can learn about by coming into the SHARE space.
We also wanted to provide students with helpful information without physically having to come into the space. While we discovered that these conversations are best in person and not through an online platform, we felt it was still important to find a way to spread some of the more important information to anyone, anywhere, anytime.