September 2020 – December 2021
Thrive Map is an interactive resource finding tool designed to facilitate the resource finding of Thrive
Thrive is a Health and Wellness provider in the Centennial College. My team and I were tasked with guiding Thrive to make relevant resources easy to find for students and faculty. I worked on this real client project as part of my Centennial College’s Interactive Media Management course.
How do we make thrive resources easily accessible, findable, and relevant to the Centennial College community?
My team and I started the research by analyzing similar services to Thrive that were offered by other secondary education institutions. Also conducted a current state analysis of the Thrive with Centennial platform.
The services reviewed were Centennial College, George Brown College, Seneca College, Sheridan College, Ryerson University, and University of Toronto. They were scored based on:
I created this Comparative Analysis with our findings. Also synthesized the data into a findings report to Thrive. These were organized in three categories:
To better identify our user base, we conducted a survey and interviews with potential end-users to get a sense of their needs, wants and past frustrations with accessing support resources.
We then created four user personas: Two domestic students, one international student, and one faculty member. They are a representation of our end-user and help guide the design decision. Below is the international student persona I created:
The main common elements of the user group were:
From the user research and personas, It was identified that a clear and relatable tone was needed. When the content Thrive currently had was analyzed it was found that the language used was overly complicated.
To illustrate how it could be improved to the client. An example was rewritten their content more easily accessible and understandable for their users.
Thrive’s content before
Thrive’s content after
Thrive needed UX Theme needs to make a user feel comfortable that they won’t be judge and that thrive is support them towards their goals. Also was understood that users needed immediate feedback to both to know they are on the right track and to minimize dropoff, It was found that some user seeks out the resources them gave up on it because off barriers.
Turning this theme into and tool our client could implement for their users, a lo-fi paper prototype was created mapping the user navigation and experience.
From the users’ needs and works well for online support resource platforms, Thrive map was created. Thrive a map is an interactive tool the user can use to easily find the resources they require in an intuitive and direct way.
Prototype showing following a user searching for counselling.
In the beginning, I and the team had a lot of assumptions that were proven wrong. It was clear to make a product that research is key to find the real needs of the users.
Thrive Map is a great tool however by it doesn’t solve all the current problems Thrive had. We sent our recommendations and findings have been delivered to the client so they can improve the whole experience.