UI/UX Case Study: VBuzz
This case study is an attempt to document the process involved in designing VBuzz, an app that helps college students sign up for events in their college.
This app was designed keeping in mind the needs of my college, Vellore Institute of Technology — Andhra Pradesh. Most of the events here are conducted by student organizers from different clubs and chapters of the college.
You can check out all the screen designs on Behance.
Introduction
The primary goal was to design an app through which students get to know about the events organized by various clubs and chapters in the college.
We worked as a team of 3 ( Shreyans Jain, Samarth Kodesia) including me on this project. We worked together in the UX process. Apart from that, Samarth worked on the frontend of the app. I was involved in making the User Interface, with Shreyans and Samarth providing feedback.
Understanding the need for an app
Usually, college-goers rely upon mail or social platforms such as Instagram about the events in college. The whole process is a bit scattered and many fail to attend events due to improper communication. We wanted to make it easier for students to register for those events directly through our app.
Research
The team decided to start the whole process by researching the current methods used by college event organizers and the benefits and shortcomings of these methods. We also looked into how the students usually found out about events and how they registered for them.
Based on the interviews with both event organizers and students, we inferred the following:
Current Methods
The organizers use various social media platforms to promote their event through posters. In case of an in-house event of a club, they send emails to the embers.
For an open event, the mail is sent through the student welfare (Student welfare is the body that oversees all the extra-curricular events of the college). The student organizers on behalf of their respective clubs send a mail regarding the event to the student welfare department, which is then forwarded to all students by Student Welfare Co-ordinator. If an event requires registration prior to the event, it is usually done using Google forms sent along with the mail. Or else, the on-spot registration process is done.
The organizers also take attendance for club members as students need to complete certain hours to earn credits for their club participation.
Shortcomings
The biggest issue the organizers had was that the emails they sent about their events kept getting lost in the students’ inbox. Students also had the same complaint. They couldn’t register for an event because of too many in-flowing emails as a lot of events by different clubs are conducted during the weekends. At times, students miss out on their own club’s events.
The registration process gets tedious for the organizers as they have to take attendance of registered students from the google sheets. It gets even more, tiring in case of on-spot registrations.
At the end of the academic year, the club hours are calculated on the basis of events attended by a student to earn his/her credit which makes marking the attendance by the organizer an important task. The duration of every event is different that increases even more workload on the organizers when it comes to calculating the hours completed by all the club members.
Our Solution
What can we provide to our users?
Our primary objective was to reduce the problems previously faced by users. From there we will provide the necessary upgrades to make the experience seamless.
What’s in it for the Organizers?
There are two types of club activities: exclusive sessions (only for club members) and open events (open to all). The organizers will be able to create such activities through this app. Collaborative events in association with other clubs will also be easier to create. Each event will consist of an image, description, time and venue which would be provided by the organizer while creating the event/session.
They would be able to access the registered students’ list all the time and make the required changes. Each student will be provided with a unique QR code, which on scanning will record their attendance. By the end of an event, a compiled list of all the attendees and absentees will be available to the organizers.
The organizing team will also have a list of all the club members’ names, their registration number, the number of events attended and a total of hours completed. This list can be exported as a CSV file/excel sheet. This would drastically cut down the amount of work one has to do at the end of the academic year.
This app is also beneficial for the student welfare as they won't be constrained by time to send a mail regarding an event. The registration process will also start sooner as the mail won’t be the only way of promotion.
The future scope will be upgrading the app to provide links or documents by organizers to share the resources with the attendees.
What’s in it for the Students?
The app would display all the events and sessions being conducted on the campus in one platform with no hassle. Event description and the poster will be present on the app and students can register for the ones they are interested in. On registering for an event, the student will be provided with a QR code. The QR code is saved in the app until the end of the event. For attendance, a student needs to show his/her QR code to an organizer who would scan it. The dull situation of roll call can be avoided.
Students can keep track of their attendance and the number of hours completed. In case of any kind of discrepancies in the attendance, the matter can be resolved when brought to the notice of the organizer.
We decided to give each club a specific colour which would be displayed in the event’s card on the homepage. ( It is shown in the sketch above. )
Tools Used
I first sketched out the design in my notebook for reference. For the final UI design, I used Adobe XD. Even while converting from sketches to final design, there were small and plausible changes made.
Logotype
Typography and Colours
Final Design
Takeaway
When it comes to a UX project, I felt it is much better to work in a team rather than as an individual. While working in a team, it is easier for us to brainstorm different ideas and give each other constructive feedbacks which is a rather hard thing to do while you are working individually.
Another thing I noticed was that we didn’t just work on our base idea but also tried to solve problems faced by the users. We might add a lot of new features to our product, the base idea would always be the same, that’s what I learnt.
Lastly, I learnt that we need to take input from someone isn’t that part of your team because we, as a designer, might think we know what exactly is best for the user but that is not true. That’s why an outsider’s opinion is needed.
I have designed UIs previously but those were personal projects for myself. To be honest, this was my first-ever UX project I worked on that didn’t just contain the visual design part. I got to implement what I learnt from content available online in this project.