Cornell students have access to over 1,000 clubs who each host several events monthly. However, it’s easy to get bogged down by clubs, schoolwork, and whatever life throws at us. After noticing that students are often frustrated by missing events or leaving events underwhelmed I hypothesized the following:
Students at Cornell don’t have the time to navigate through events.
Product Thinking
Target Audience
We first began by targeting the entire 20,000 students of Cornell. But in order to craft a specific solution and gain a loyal user base, I elected to narrow the scope down to new students:
User Research
Our research began with user surveys which provided us with general trends in the problem space. We followed this with several in-person interviews to dig into the specific pain points.
Scattered Events - Students are frustrated by the lack of event centralization.
Lacking Knowledge - Students didn’t know about events.
Problem Definition
Through our research, we learned that the larger issue with events is because events spread through different channels which are often narrow and inaccessible. Specifically, I defined the problem as:
I want to go to events but I can’t do that because discovering the right events is hard.
But this led us to question, what is the right event? During interviews, students had different interpretations of the“ideal” event. While some are interested in specifically relevant events, others wanted to see a variety of events. This became an interesting challenge to tackle when ideating solutions.
User Opportunities
During our research, students also pointed out issues that aren’t blockers(things that stop them from going to events), but can still create friction in the process. Below is a compilation of nice-to-haves aimed at easing processes around events.
Find out who’s going
Share events with friends
Express realistic measure of commitment to event
Location information
Market Research
Competitor Analysis
Prior to ideating specific solutions, I turned to existing solutions in this problem space; not to rationalize our problem space, but rather to see where these products excel and how their ideas can be shaped to fit Cornell students’ needs.
What makes our app different from these solutions?
Overall, by designing for fellow students I am able to discuss the problems students face with processes around events. Specifically, I learned that we need:
Unlike Facebook, our solution will increase transparency into why events are displayed and decrease biases that currently restrict visibility to events.
Unlike Agnes, our solution will maintain clear product direction by focusing on a smaller target audience and
Unlike Eventbrite, events will solely be centered around the Cornell community to create an intimate experience
Feature Requirements
To determine the core features of this solution, I abstracted points brought up by users to really dig into their pain points. By doing so, I determined three essential requirements:
Displaying a Wide Range of Events
Pain Point: Existing solutions perpetuate sharing of events between only like minded students.
Feature Space: There needs to be an unfiltered, non-biased means of displaying events.
Students at Cornell don’t have the time to navigate through events.
Product Thinking
Target Audience
User Research
Problem Definition
I want to go to events but I can’t do that because discovering the right events is hard.
User Opportunities
Market Research
Feature Requirements