Rationale for Approach
When we were given the example question, “How might we improve the experience of students trying to discover interesting and delicious beverages around Harrisonburg?” I thought to myself, “How am I going to do this? The only thing I drink is water.” Then, when I found out that was only a baseline question and that we could design our app to help students find almost whatever we wanted, I knew immediately what I was going to do. Hamburgers. Hamburgers come in so many different types of restaurants, styles of bun, the way the burger is cooked, special toppings, unique sides, the way the fries are cooked… there are so many factors that go into choosing where to get your burger that it’s often difficult to choose.
So, I thought, “What if there was an app, in which students could select exactly what they’re looking for in their burger-eating experience, and then the app could suggest to them where to go? For example, I could select that I wanted to go somewhere within a five-mile radius, no more than a 20-minute wait-time, toasts their buns, and has curly fries on the side. Then the app would run through its keywords preset with all of the different places to get a burger in Harrisonburg, and it would suggest a few different places that I would like to go with those specifications.
Selecting Students to Interview
At first, I thought that making sure all of the students I interviewed would absolutely die for a hamburger, but then I realized that would be biased; so instead, I simply interviewed students who I knew loved eating at restaurants of any kind. When I asked my research questions, I asked them verbatim, and then I explained a little more deeply, exactly what I meant. For example, I made sure they realized that I meant something different when I said a sit-down or chain restaurant versus a hole-in-the-wall versus a fast-food restaurant.
I interviewed two males and three females. I interviewed one freshman, two juniors, and two seniors. I interviewed four JMU students and one student who does not attend JMU but who visits often. I made sure to have a range of ages (freshmen – seniors), genders, and habits/types of burger-eaters. Also, I never just wrote down their answer to each question. I wrote down every little detail that they answered with, which was helpful later on, because even if you don’t report those details in your findings, you still have them to look back on to see their thought process when answering each question.
User Experience Design Portfolio 