Project Type
Academic – HKUST COMP4461 Project 1

Project Duration
1 Month

UI Design & Prototyping Tool
Figma 🔗Prototype

In response to the prolonged online learning modes necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, our team recognizes that the HKUST campus remains a vital hub for living and activities for many individuals. With this in mind, we aim to develop an innovative smart dining app exclusively tailored for HKUST canteens. Our primary objective is to enhance the overall dining experience for individuals residing in HKUST by leveraging user-centric design principles.

By seamlessly integrating with the existing campus infrastructure, our app will provide a convenient and efficient solution for students, faculty, and staff to access information about canteens’ working hours, available food options, place orders in advance, track nutritional information, and provide feedback on their dining experiences. Through this initiative, we aspire to revolutionize the way people dine on campus while fostering a sense of community and well-being among the HKUST population.

Needfinding

“If _____ on campus were intelligent…”

Our group embarked on the project by conducting a thorough needfinding exercise to determine what aspects of campus life users believed should be more “intelligent”. Through insightful semi-structured interviews with several students, we discovered a prevailing dissatisfaction with the current level of intelligence on our campus. These interviews also yielded a plethora of valuable ideas for potential improvements.

Needfinding questions and results:

Have you ever heard of any intelligent facilities in UST?

What do you wish to be more intelligent in UST (e.g. technology, equipment, etc.)?

What are the existing solutions?

Catering	Academic	Transportation	Others
Avoid busy lunch hour	Use personal belongings to occupy seats	Avoid taking the first and last shuttle bus	Use intuition to navigate
Ask friends to help occupying seats	Book study rooms online	Avoid busy hours	Go to toilet during lessons guarantees no waiting time
Use personal belongings to occupy seats	Log on to SIS earlier for course registration	Walk to the bus station before HKUST	Use Goop or USThing to meet friends
Takeaway instead of dining in

Are you satisfied with the current approach?

What improvements would you suggest?

Catering	Academic	Transportation	Others
Add a catering function to USThing	Allow library seat booking online	Develop a shuttle bus tracking app	Make a better path advisor
Remotely order food	Upgrade the UST portal	Display queueing status somewhere on campus	Smart toilet features displaying helpful information
Show available seats and approximate waiting time			Develop a social app that is dedicated to HKUST students

We obtained the following mindmap:

After careful consideration, we made the strategic decision to concentrate our efforts on enhancing the catering service branch. This choice was driven by the fact that numerous interviewees highlighted issues related to canteens, an integral part of campus life that impacts nearly every member of our university community.

GOMS Diagram

After careful consideration, we made the strategic decision to concentrate our efforts on enhancing the catering service branch. This choice was driven by the fact that numerous interviewees highlighted issues related to canteens, an integral part of campus life that impacts nearly every member of our university community.

User Personas

We also created personas for different users and the management teams of the canteens on campus.

POV: Ideals & Constraints

With these processes, we identified the POVs –

1. Students and staffs need to finish their meals within a controllable time
2. Students and staffs want to find the available (or favourite) canteen quickly
3. Students and staffs want to find out places for gathering easily
4. Students and staffs do not want to spend much time on waiting a seat/ordering food
5. Restaurants want to do better estimation on their preparation work before peak hours
6. Restaurants want to fulfil customers’ orders as soon as possible

Ideation

Storyboard

Speed Dating

We then conducted speed dating with friends in HKUST to try to find out if such a design would be sufficient for an enhanced canteen experience. We received some key feedback:

• Finding a canteen with fewer people can be helpful for people in a hurry
• During busy hours, such as lunchtime, canteens are often full, and seat availability changes rapidly. In such situations, the app’s effectiveness may be limited
• Some additional functions can be added to help reduce the unnecessary time spent. For example, seat reservation and online ordering
• Newcomers may not be familiar with canteens here, and restaurants may hope to have a channel for communication with their customers

Some of these suggestions were adapted into our final prototype – a mobile app that offers full-stack functions for experience in canteens.

Demo Video