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DIRECTING TRAFFICWhat’s the probelm?It’s 6:58pm and you have an invitation to meet Melinda Gates at 7 in Eliot Houses’s Memorial Room. Yet, the moment you walk through Eliot’s creaking front doors, you’re already stumped. Should you turn left? Right? Go up/down/around the stairs? Flustered, you run around the corrdiors until a tutor finally points you in the right direction.
These occurences are far too common, taking place every hour in each of 12 upperclassmen houses. As students, we run from event to event only to spend a quarter of the time getting lost in the houses. We’ve found that the main reasons for tardiness are confusion with floorplans or unclear signs and directions. To put an end to tardiness and design better event experiences for everyone, our first goal was to tackle simplifying navigation in the Harvard houses.
How might we direct people to their desired destination more efficiently in the Harvard houses?
Proposed Question:
Research:We decided to start our research at Adams House, the closest of the 12 residential houses. We first took a tour of the house with a junior to get acquainted with the basement passageways, multiple disconnected entryways, and hidden rooms. We asked a building administrator for a floorplan of Adams house, and this is what we recieved:
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?
ME NEITHER.
We conducted user interviews to try to pinpoint the specific problems that students, faculty, and visitors were having with the houses, as well as what current solutions exist to combat the problem. To gain further information, we printed a giant floorplan of Adams house, sat in three different dining halls (Adams, Mather, Lowell) during meal hours, and asked people to draw their most frequent path in Adams house using a marker.
Working in Adams Dining Hall
With these understandings, we recognized the need for a solution that focused on the individual, took advantage of “hotspots” in each house, allowed people to find spaces in disconnected buildings, and was inviting and visible to a first-time visitor.
Current Solutions:
Giving directions through email for a club event / social
Asking the nearest person for directions
Texting friends living in the house to get directions
Follow a crowd of people
Trial and error, aka getting lost
Insights:Non-residents almost always go through the main entrance to the house
The most frequented location in every house is the dining hall
No one knows where bathrooms are, not even residents
Buildings are disconnected, making it impossible to find rooms in disconnected buildings
Signs exist that help with navigation, but these signs were scarce and hard to find
People are insecure about asking for directions.
There are “hotspots” in each house that everyone passes through (main entrance, dining hall entrance etc.)
Residents take completely different paths than non-residents, but non-residents generally pass through the same areas
Prototypes:We wanted to see how well the current solutions worked, so we created working prototypes of the ones we found most fitting for the criteria we set above:
Notecards at main entrance:Similar to giving directions via email, we wrote notecards and put them at the main entrace, with an extremely visible sign prompting visitors to pick up a notecard. Although this was somewhat effective in getting peo-ple to their destinations (needing to backtrack, confusing terminology), it wasted a ton of paper since people tended to not put notecards back when they exited the house. Big no, no for the environment!
Direction Texting ServiceWe posted a number that anyone could text, which connected to one of our phones. Around 5-8pm, when many club events happen, we copy pasted directions from a pre-written list into iMessage whenever someone texted us for directions to a particular location. If this prototype were brought to completion, it would be an intelligent, automated response system giving people directions, much like how people text their friends who live in the house to get directions.
Although this sytem worked well and solved the problem of unresponsiveness when asking friends for directions, it seemed extremely impersonal and required continuous effort on the part of the user to continue typing “OK.”
We liked the incorporation of technology into this prototype, though, and continued with brainstorming ways to effectively use technology in our solution!
The Tablet DirectoryFinally, after rounds of brainstorming, we found a solution that didn’t require users to interact with others, can easily be located in a “hotspot,” and took advantage of the technological savviness of the majority of our users!
The tablets will be placed on stands at each houses’s hotspots, and when users come into the house looking for directions, they can approach a tablet, find the room they’d like to navigate to, then watch a sped-up clip of the shortest route they could take to get to the location.
We knew that visual memory trumps all other memory, so we proceeded. We still weren’t sure how fast to play the video, or if we should give textual cues. Onto iterations!
Iterations:We used Hyperlapse, a video recording tool, to record videos of the route to Coolidge Room in Adams House. We experimented with how much to speed up the video, as well as if we should include a floorplan next to the video.
Iteration 1:Video with camera at eye level of the route from Adams House main entrance to Coolidge Room.
LINK HERE: https://youtu.be/ofxphfwzL7s
Iteration 2:Same video, with the addition of a floorplan side by side.
LINK HERE: https://youtu.be/jZw97a0qeCs
To test these prototypes, one of our team members walked at a leisurly pace to Coolidge room, and took 2:06 minutes. Then, we had undergraduates who didn’t know the location of the room test these prototypes and send us a #selfie when they reached the room! On average, participants performed better with the first iteration. Participants in the second iteration said the floorplan was a distraction.
#SELFIES !!!
Final Product:Because we were showing a demo of our project in Harvard’s Innovation Lab, we created a demo of the path to a well-hidden conference room in the Harvard i-Lab! Here it is!
Link to video: http://youtu.be/RjOEIWTrcq8
Next Steps:We’re still working on testing this further and getting feedback from students, as well as creating videos! We’ll need to acquire many more tablets and put our machine shop skills to the test as wel create tablet stands. We’ll create a simple application with the videos loaded for each house, and put them to the test!
Our product is not only limited to the houses. It could be used in administrative buildings, our confusing prison-like gym, and even to guide tourists around Harvard Yard!
Personal Reflection:I entered this project as the only freshman on a team of 3 other juniors, and the only one without substatial design thinking experience. However, I recognized that my perspective as an always-lost freshman engaged in club activities from 5-9pm every day in the Houses provided the team with substatial value. I learned to rapid prototype using Keynote, iMovie, Proto.io, and plain old pencil and paper, and am secretly very proud of the Post-It artwork filled with bizarre ideas that lines my dorm walls.
These projects continue to reinforce the reason I fell in love with design in the first place. I’m able to untangle and reinvent the very qualities that make us human, to reexamine delightful intricacies that most people pass over on a first glance. And doing it with a team who will walk with me for 40 minutes to stuff our faces with free pizza is a curious pleasure in itself. Thanks to Ted Ko, Eliza Chang, and Ivan Cisneros for stopping me from laughing too hard, getting too lost, and conveniently disappearing whenever I’m interviewing big, scary athletes. You guys rock.
El Valedor 2014 Yearbook
Breakthrough, the theme of the El Valedor 2014 Yearbook, was chosen to showcase the struggles and triumphs of every individual at Monta Vista High School. We covered every page with “topey dove gray,” a term we coined at the beginning of the school year, to allow photographs and writing to truly shine through. Our design element was the mesa symbol to symbolize the climbing, plateauing, and breakthrough stages.
I served as the Editor-in-Chief.
PUBLICATIONS
Opening & Closing Dividers
Section Dividers
After spontaneously joining my high school’s yearbook publication in 11th grade, I immediately fell in love with desgin. I pored over old, award-winning yearbooks and remade them in InDesign and Illustrator. Creative storytelling was was an art in itself as well. Since then, I’ve been designing brochures, posters, and more yearbooks on Harvard’s yearbook staff.
Special
Colophon & Editor’s Note
Year in Review
WECode 2015While creating puzzles for WECode (Women Engineers Code), I also designed print materials including sponsorship documents and brochures. A running theme of circles helped guide my designs, for I wanted to capture the inclusiveness and community WECode strived to foster at the conference. Our bold, coral color represents empowerment. With a feminine touch.
SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
Mentorship LunchEnjoy lunch with a small group of students, grouped based on interests corresponding to your mission.
PanelsEngage in conversation with other professionals and academics on a particular topic, incorporating audience questions.
Potential topics: Data Science, Internet of Things / Wearables / Hardware Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Social Impact, Professional Development
Lightning Talks (+Mixer)Present a 15-minute talk on your area of expertise, with sessions followed by a mixer to connect with attendees.
WorkshopsLead a group of 15 students in a 2-hour, hands-on workshop as they learn how to use your technology and get to know your company.
Examples of past workshops: OCaml 101 (Jane Street)Building Parse Applications (Facebook)Meeting User Needs (Palantir)
Special EventsProvide a memorable experience during the conference that embodies your culture. Ideas: photo booth, yoga class, lego room, manicure station
Resume BooksReceive resumes from our 600 attendees, as well as our Harvard Women in CS Resume Book. Gold Sponsors receive the resumes February first while Platinum Sponsors gain access in January.
Puzzle DayProvide a puzzle for attendees to solve during our challenge and we’ll give them the opportunity to submit their answers to you.
Private EventHold a private event one of the nights of the conference and we will help organize the logistics as well as provide early-access to resume books of our attendees.
gold + platinum Sponsor Benefits
platinumSponsor Benefits
HPAIR 2015Designing the handbook challenged me to work with large amounts of content. I recognized the importance of clearly defined, easy to find sections in a 108 page handbook. The typeface also carried a strong personality so I simplified the design to let the content shine.
LOGO DESIGNS
Puzzle HuntCryptography, anyone? This puzzle was later used as part of the final puzzle as well, using the random letters as clues.
HackHarvard LogoI set out to create a logo that both reflected the new hackathon that we were launching at Harvard while acknowledging and incorporating the current hackathon trend of low poly and broken, triangular shapes. The clean line breaks in the logo represent a culture of hacking, or putting things together.
HPAIR 2015 LogoThe theme for 2015’s conference was “Asia’s Blueprint for Growth: Building an Inclusive Future.” I drew landmark Asian buildings by hand to create a blueprint feel, and placing them side by side captures the inclusivity of Asia’s future.
Logo Idea Generation
Color of the YearLearning to use layers in Photoshop!
