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My OCADU Mobile App

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Research Questions

Research

First, it was important to define the scope of research before diving into the research for an extraction of meaningful insights. The list of research questions is shown below.

Research Questions:

  • How does the OCADU App compare to other post-secondary apps?

  • What differentiates mobile apps, mobile websites and desktop websites?

  • What makes mobile apps successful?

  • What app features are students interested in?

  • Are there services specific to OCADU that can be implemented in the app design?

  • In what ways can a better mobile app improve student engagement with their learning and school events? 

  • What school related apps do students use on a day to day basis? 

  • Why would a campus app be useful?

  • What are student expectations when using the app?

Mobile Platform Table

Mobile Platform Research:

Understanding different mobile platforms helped us to have better observations.

The comparison table below shows ups and downs on the different mobile platforms to better understand how apps work:

Mobile Websites

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Using browsers like
Google Chrome
and Safari

Advantages

Disadvantages

  • Quick option for making content available on a mobile device

  • Only needs to be built once

  • User experience is limited to displaying information (UI, unique functions, push messaging)

  • Load times 

  • Unavailable offline

Hybrid Mobile Apps

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Web apps that use
HTML5 code in a
“mobile wrapper”

  • Bridges gaps between digital space and user’s phone

  • An alternative to native apps to increase engagement

  • Can be used universally on any platform (e.g. iOS, Android)

  • User experience limitations from mobile websites apply 

  • Load times

  • Unavailable offline

  • Absence of unique feature that users expect from mobile apps

  • Lower cost than native app

  • One codebase

Native Mobile App

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Apps written in the
native language of
a platform

  • Require development for each platform (e.g. iOS, Android)

  • Take longer to build

  • Costly 

  • Apps like Pokemon Go and Twitter

  • When thoughtfully designed can provide engaging UI and UX

  • Makes use of mobile device capabilities 

  • Faster load times 

  • Perform online or offline 

  • Improved security in comparison to hybrid apps

Market Research

Market Research:

We made a closer observation on recent market trends to take away essentials on mobile apps, know diverse perspectives of the audiences. We looked into similar apps provided by other schools and their reviews in order to compare and figure out points of improvements about MyOCADU app as well.

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Main research is summarized below.

Consent Form-User Interview

User Interview

Consent Form

We created a Consent Form with 10 open-ended and well-considered questions listed to invite the participants to share their experiences and stories, as well as give them enough information and reliability before the interview. The Consent Form gave them enough information and reliability before the interview, which allowed them to have stronger responses. See document

Task Flow

Task Flow

I created a task flow, in which 3 tasks will be given to users or participants of my future usability tests. Having the objective and a guide helps users to navigate through the mobile app with high focus, and to recognize the mobile features. The diagram had me thinking in users’ shoes. I was able to examine each of the steps of interactions.

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