The graduation project

University end of year project | Showcased: June 2018

TL;DR

Designed and developed a native iOS app to enhance peer support at Bournemouth University by expanding the PAL system. The app used geolocation to connect students across all years, enabling encrypted messaging and real-time drop-in sessions on campus.

Background

The final and biggest challenge in order for me to graduate university.. the graduation project.

The project brief was simple. "Design and develop a functional piece of digital content, this could be a website, web app, or mobile app, that can be demonstrated and showcased to a live audience".

The project started in September 2017, and the deadline for completion was June 2018. During this time I also had to complete my dissertation (I chose the path of the creative dissertation which meant I had to write a 5,000 word essay, and have a supporting piece of digital content that would equate to 5,000 words).

For my graduation project, I chose to create a native iOS application specifically for Bournemouth University students.

The application offers a campus based geolocation experience that would allow students to connect with one another, regardless of their course or year, and build-upon the current PAL system. The PAL system, short for Peer Assisted Learning, is offered to all courses where students who are entering their final year can act as 'student support' to help second year students better prepare for their placement year.

The goal of the application was to help build upon the PAL system and to further increase the collaboration between students across all years. As the PAL system is limited to those who are preparing to go on their placement year, there is no support offered to first year students (or the opportunity to openly collaborate with others is very limited across all years).

Other features of the application is that using the geolocation based experienced, students were able to host 'drop-in' sessions to other students on campus, as well as having a built-in messaging feature that was fully encrypted.

Ideation

To ensure that I had the best chance of showcasing a completed project by the expected deadline, I split the project down into key areas so I can create a structured project plan. The steps taken were:

1. Empathise & Define: During this phase of the project I spent time learning more about the intended target audience. Through the use of user persona's, I was able to gain a better understanding of:
   • Who the audience is,
   • Explore the current problem(s),
   • Understand user behaviour,
   • Carry out competitor research,
   • Define project requirements,
   • Prioritise project features.
2. Ideation: With the project scope being clearly defined, I was then able to start going through the process of:
   • Creating user flows,
   • Start to sketch initial design concepts and gather feedback from peers,
   • Create low fidelity wireframes and gather further feedback.
3. Prototype: Throughout the previous stages of the project, Empathise & Define, and Ideation, I was able to create detailed wireframes of the application. From these wireframes, I gathered further feedback before moving onto designing high fidelity mockups.
4. Usability Testing: I was able to carry out valuable user testing throughout this phase of the project. These rounds of feedback allowed me to further gain a better understanding of the audience, discover new possibilities in which the problem can be resolved, and offer insightful analysis that was not discovered in the initial research phase.
5. Launch: Through the countless rounds of usability testing, revising features, and fine tuning the overall design to match the requirements that help solve the problem(s) being experienced, the application was finalised and ready for launch (end of year showcase).

Branding

To ensure that the application aligned with the university, the brand colours were picked directly from the university logo. The only adjustment I made to the colour palette was that I dropped the standard '#000000' from the main branding and only used this with font colours in the main application.

As Bournemouth is a well known tourist attraction for its iconic beach, I wanted to incorporate the waves of the ocean into the main branding. To achieve this, I created an ocean-like design with the brand colours and placed this on splash screen of the application.

Final Designs

The following designs were created, developed and demonstrated to a live audience as part of my final exam at university.

Outcome

I'm glad to report that I was successfully able to design, develop and showcase this application to the live audience.

Upon completion of this project, I gave all of the source code to the university (for free). The reason for this is at that time there was interest for this to be pursued further and to become a real application that all students could use.

I was awarded a First Class Honours degree in Digital Media Design, and I officially received my scroll in November 2018.