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Seat Reservation

A webpage for making seat reservation that best supports students' studying environment at the main library in University of California, Davis.

Duration

11/3/2021 - 11/15/2021

(2 weeks)

Roles

User Research: Survey

Wireframe

Prototype

Branding

Tools

Adobe XD

Google Form

Project Background

Many UC Davis students use the Shields Library for multiple purposes, but not all students are able to find desirable seats. This issue is critical especially during the final exam season since more students come to the library for a better studying environment.

 

In order to prevent this issue we wanted to design a system that allows students to reserve seats so they are guaranteed to sit in their favorite seat when needed.

photo from The California Aggie, by Anh-Tram Bui

It's all about the users!

To better understand our users' point of views and their pain points,

I conducted survey with 10+ UC Davis students.

​

I asked,

how long do you spend, in average, to find desired seats in the library?

54.5%

Students spend

 9-12 minutes finding seats

9.1%

Students spend

1-3 minutes finding seats

I found that more than half of our respondents spend more than 5 minutes to find seats.

Persona

The research results narrowed users into two groups: 

Students who came to the library to study alone or study as a group

Group 1: Studying Alone

Group 2: Studying With Friends

User Flow

Flow 1: helps users find their preference first and then proceed with the reservation process

Flow 2: allows users to utilize pre-set preferences to proceed with the reservation process

Wireframe

These are the sketches of our screens, which contained four sections.

  1. Sign in

  2. Select what library to reserve for

  3. Reserve a seat

  4. Receive a verification message. 

Low Fidelity

The low fidelity screens demonstrate basic features that the user will interact with, and briefly show what kind of information users will see.

> Click on the image for a bigger view <

Usability Test

Before I moved on to the high fidelity, I conducted usability tests to make sure that the designs were easy to understand for the users.

 

This is what I did:

  • Conducted user test from 6 UC Davis students​

  • ​Participants were asked to reserve a single seat (not group study)​

What I found

  • Having two main Call To Actions in the home page is confusing

    • "Help Me Reserve" = remove because the users will not be seeking for help before they begin the reservation process​

  • Preferences for seat selection may not be necessary for all students

    • add a button that leads users to their profile page to add or edit their preferences​

  • Having a summary section helped the participants double check their selection and reassure their selections

Consolidating Branding & Features

branding.png
branding.png

As this was a redesign project of an existing platform, the color palette and typeface was already set for UC Davis. So, we decided to move forward with UC Davis colors and a typeface that UC Davis Canvas page use.

High Fidelity Screens

This is a slideshow of all the high fidelity screens.

​

Hover over to see details of this screen and try interacting with the prototype yourself!

Takeaway

1. Simple Tasks Also Require Many Considerations

  • Many things should be considered for while designing any reservation system like environment, security, and rules.

    • considering exterior environment and system that helps the reservation system run effectively.

2. User Testers Give Great Insights

  • The best method of receiving feedback from the potential users is user testing; we were able to observe any confusions and obstacles from the users through their facial expressions and the interviews after the user test

What's Next?

Since this project was completed within a very short time frame, there were many things that I wanted to further develop in the future:

​

  1. Allow students to select different floors of the library and have better map of the library

  2. Create QR code for library check-in and check-outs

  3. Keeping track of ongoing changes in environment of the library; the noise level and crowd level will consistently change so it should be regularly updated

  4. Mobile version of the application for better accessibility

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