City Maps
Developing a Mobile App for City Navigation and Increasing Use of Campus Safety Services
April 2022
Timeline: 8 weeks
Role: Designer
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe XD, MS Teams, Trello
Project Summary
Goal: Create a mobile app which allows new and returning students to keep track of different locations on their campus, and to set custom routes of travel between various start points and destinations.
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Function: Check the weather, schedule, and be notified of any alerts from campus security.
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Style: The style of the app was designed to adhere to the style guide of the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
Artboard Overview
Empathize: Personas and User Research
In order to get a better understanding of the users’ needs, a persona and an interview script were created. Interviews were then conducted with people matching the persona. This was our gateway to deciding which features should be included, as well as which areas to prioritize in earlier sprints.
Primary Challenges
1. Time Constraint
The largest challenge of this project was the time constraint. Due to time restrictions, the execution of this project followed Agile Methodology, with each sprint being one week long. There were eight sprints in total.
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2. Avoiding Scope Creep
My team had a lot of different features that they wanted to implement throughout our project timeline, and we found that we developed a tendency of wanting to increase the scope of the project as we went along. A strict adherence to Agile Methodology prevented this from becoming a real issue. Keeping our original goals in mind and preventing too many different ideas from clouding the original vision of the project was a challenge, but was one which was overcome.
Prototype Overview
Solution
The Agile Methodology was paramount to contributing to the project in an incremental manner. By setting specific goals each week, our team was able to make progress in a predictable and organized manner. We were able to prioritize different tasks to ensure that time was being used effectively at all times.
A key feature that was implemented into the design were the sliders meant for alerting campus security. The vast majority of students on campus do not have the campus security phone number memorized.
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Thanks to this app, all they would have to do is slide the slider to the right in order to contact campus security. Theoretically, they would already be looking for directions on the app at the time of an incident, and campus security would only be a swipe away. In this context, the use of sliders in place of buttons prevents accidental calls from occurring, without sacrificing the speed at which a call takes to initiate.
Schedule Flow
Campus Safety Flow
Weather Flow
Data & Results
Only 17% of college students utilize campus security escorts, and the estimated number of students who have the campus security phone number memorized is close to zero.
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This app provides a method for campus security services to be accessed much more quickly and easily than conventional methods allow. It also allows students to digitally view the campus map on a macro scale, and plan routes accordingly.
Lessons Learned
The biggest lesson learned from this project was learning to keep scope creep at bay. With a project like this, there is a seemingly endless amount of new ideas that present themselves as work continues on the project. However, it is up to the designer to be able to make decisions about prioritizing certain elements and making sure that a consistent vision is maintained throughout the project.
Settings Flow
Home Page Flow