Dibner Mobile Print is a streamlined printing application designed for NYU students, offering a productive process for finding printer availability and swiftly uploading documents.
HackDibner
September-December 2023
Cindy Chen, Fei Wang, Ari Wong
User Interviews, High-fidelity Prototypes, Usability testing, User flow
Figma, Miro
The Dibner library serves as a universal workspace for boasting the highest concentration of printers on the Brooklyn campus. However, many of us have encountered frustrations, including slow processing times, navigating the confusion of NYU's mobile print, and when the printing systems malfunction.
Ease student printing experience by providing clearer and anticipatory information about printers and accessing assistances when needed
How might we streamline a system to improve student printing experience at the Dibner Library?
Method: survey and interviewe placed QR codes near each printer at Dibner, aiming to capture initial perspectives on issues related to printing. We successfully collected 30 direct responses from students who use Dibner library printers. To ensure a well-rounded understanding, we also interviewed front desk staff and IT staff to gain insights from both perspectives regarding the printing issues at hand.
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Method: affinity mapping, journey map
we sorted the notes from the survey + interviews and categorized them to find commonalities to find 6 common themes
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Findings: Based on these quotes, we found perspective on what staff and students have to say about these issues from printer status, refund problems, printing process updates (how long is the printing job along the way), staff seeking that students not much often seek for help, and customizing prints which is unaccessible at times
To better understand stakeholder analysis, we recognized a communication gap between staff and students that is impacting the overall printing system.
There are unreported problems that are unknown to the library staff from the students. Thus, this might delay the time it takes to fix the printer, increasing downtime of printers, increasing downtime of printers (If it’s a serious problem staff needs to contact TGI (3rd party company in charge of printers) which might take up to a week to fix).
Perfect Plan for Starters.
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Perfect Plan for Starters.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros
Frustrated with non-functional printers
Students find it frustating that when they arrive at Dibner, they end up on a not functional printer whether that is faulty printer or not colored.
Stay In the Know
Students should be able to know ahead of time if the printers are available to use or not.
Perfect Plan for Starters.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros
Perfect Plan for Starters.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros
Issues with the current NYU Mobile Print
Based on the current NYU mobile print system, there has been significant confusion regarding print settings, and processing times
Improve user experience through feedback
Students should be informed when their print job is complete on mobile print to avoid wasting time waiting without updates. Print settings should be clear, and assistance should be available when needed.
Perfect Plan for Starters.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros
Perfect Plan for Starters.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros
Communication gap between staff and students
There are an existing communication gap between staff and students, particularly regarding issues such as account balance, printing problems, or error messages.
Students rarely seek for help from staff or when they need assistance, they are not around
Current system: Student> Staff> IT
(to request refund issue)
Seek help through a simplified process
Students should be able to seek for help through a simplified process to inquire by minmizing the need for intermediary steps
New system: Student> our app> staff & IT
(to request refund issue)
(to seek for answers to questions about printer trouble shootings)
We used each of the above insights as a design goal to help drive feature the multiple prioritizations that allows students to smoothly integrated different parts of their printing process together in this one app. These are main task flows for how a user would interact with the mobile print app. This also informed us on what pages we needed to design for.
We conducted 20 user testing with diverse students that already use current system of NYU mobile print & students who never to rarely use the Mobile Print Apps
Task: Adjust a document and adjust print settings
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The decision to replace multiple buttons with a single custom-sized button accompanied by explanatory text enhances the user by simplifying interactions, reducing cognitive load, providing more clarity. Additionally, we introduced a more personalized touch to the top of the screen design by incorporating students' names, making the overall design less static and more reader-friendly.
Task: Find a question that you have for print errors
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We group topics into tags creates a more organized structure, allowing users to easily locate and access information on specific questions.
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Print history should be hidden on the profile screen because there are not a lot of use cases unless users see a discrepancy with their print funding. We also changed the wording/icons and placement of the navigations menu for easier understanding
This project is such a meaningful experience because it was my first UX case study and first hackathon. The learning curves were steep, especially in navigating the nuances of user research and synthesizing that information into a meaningful findings. As we delved into the design implementation phase, the importance of considering the feasibility within the current NYU system became evident, prompting engaging discussions with stakeholders, particularly IT. There are business needs, stakeholder needs, user needs, UX best practices, design, developing capabilities, and time constraints. We learned how to navigate through balancing all these occasionally contradicting forces.
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