Research
In order to get a good understanding of our user demographic of, Northern Virginia Community College students, staff and faculty, as well as their experiences in finding their way around campus, our team conducted Qualitative and Quantitative research.
Research Questions
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What factors lead to campus navigation confusion for first semester NOVA students and visitors?
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What are some of the limitations of other navigation apps/resources that create difficulty for students in navigating the campus? (that we can improve and add as a feature to our app?)
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To what extent would minimizing student tardiness improve class instruction?
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What are some questions that people ask when navigating? (and can they find the answer from resources provided by NOVA so far?)
Our research was conducted under a schedule of the Product Design Incubator (PDI) fellowship with limited resources. Thus resulting in the following limitations:
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A bias of convenience: Due to our limited resources and short time frame, for our Quantitative research, flyer distribution was limited to only one of NOVA's six campuses.
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Time constraint: As a result of PDI's tight schedule, our team was only able to interview a total of six people for Qualitative data collection.
Our Limitations
Quantitative Research
1. To get numerical data our team, developed a survey of eight Questions all intended to gather numerical data about our users' wayfinding experiences around campus.
2. In order to reach as broad an audience as possible, our team settled on the strategy of creating flyers with QR codes linked to our survey.
Qualitative Research
In order to get a good understanding of our demographic of NOVA students, and staff as well as getting Non-numerical data, our team settled on conducting interviews.