Art Direction: Courtney Spencer | Tyler School of Art and Architecture Temple University
Throughout the years, Temple University has provided campus maps for students to navigate around the University. Around 54% of students stated in the Campus Life Survey that Temple University could improve their navigational resources in various ways. With this data, Hound took student feedback into consideration and will provide a service where navigation would make it easier for students to find classes, study spots, recreation, and restaurants through our app or kiosk that will be located in multiple on campus buildings.
Research
As a group, my group member Olivia and I began research for Hound, and we wanted to establish a problem and the pain points surrounding navigation and campus life. By doing some initial research and exercises, we were able to establish that narrowing in on way finding on campus would be a large enough challenge to tackle on its own for the app.
Survey
Together, we conducted a survey asking 33 students about campus life and their feelings on existing campus navigation. The first question students were asked, “In the first week of classes, were you late to any of them due to navigational issues? How late were you to class?”, and 33.3% of students responded they have never been late. 67% of those students stated they have been a couple minutes late due to navigation issues.
Students were then asked if they used campus maps, GPS, or other navigational resources to find their classes, and 67.4% of students responded that they used GPS. 0.12% of students stated they used a combination of GPS and campus maps — while the other 0.12% used strictly campus maps. Students were finally asked on a scale of 1–5, 1 being difficult and 5 being easy, is it navigating the TU Mobile Map, and 42.4% responded neutral, while 24.2% answered to it being easy to navigate the TU Mobile Map.
Comparison
In conducting research, we not only gathered navigation interfaces from familiar map apps, but we also grabbed educational resources like Canvas and Blackboard. We wanted to see how these companies take other school identities and apply them to their own branding. Both sets of examples proved to be very beneficial to landing on our final design and direction for branding, UI, and the design system.
Value Proposition
Accessible: The kiosk and app will be accessible to all students, staff, and visitors. There will be multiple kiosk set up in different buildings throughout Temple University campus where users could go on to navigate their classes. Through the kiosk, users could then have the option to either exit the screen after they are done, or continue on the mobile app.
Reduces Time: With the app and kiosk being easily accessible for students on campus, this will also reduce the amount of time it takes for a student to search for their classes.
Design Process
After doing thorough research on navigation apps as well as Temple’s own campus and student feedback, we wanted to take a very intentional way to design for each university and their branding. By having an active color shift in different universities, it posed itself as a challenge to make it easiest to understand with the interface existing in multiple color variations. We focused the color change to buttons and selected icons in the navigation.
Digital assets
When creating the digital components of the Hound navigation, we considered the ease of use as well as what the general demographic of users would be using. We decided creating a mobile app format as well as a touch-screen kiosk format would be appropriate and ideal for the user.
The app utilizes a familiar navigation interface. We maintained this to ensure the user would be able to approach the app with ease. The bottom navigation structure allows the user to tap between different tabs. By adding micro-animations and overlay features within Hound, we added a friendly sense to the application. Not only will the app house information for navigating to classes, but it will also include trending places for studying, food, and recreation around campus. The user is also able to save their favorite spots on campus to the saved section. This allows there to be a level of personalization to each user’s experience. Besides traditional navigation style, the app allows the use of AI technology to navigate within buildings to find specific internal locations.
The kiosk format is able to work independently as well as in combination with the mobile app. The kiosk would allow the user to tap their ID to log in to the tablet to view their own classes and saved locations. After viewing the route to the desired location, the kiosk gives you the option to scan a QR code to continue on the mobile format so you can get the active directions as opposed to the stagnant map.
Design system and brand assets
Naming: Hound is a company that serves the purpose to make navigation easier for students on Temple University’s campus. We wanted the name to represent wayfinding, so that is how we came up with Hound. Hound is named after the famous hound dog that is known to sniff out locations and or objects.
Logo Design: During the sketch process, we were trying to come up with a simple but unique logo that just didn’t play off of the “hound dog” or navigation system. We wanted something that was more discrete while being able to recognize the logo mark. So, we came up with a simple line shape that is made up of the letter “H” to display a route and the name Hound.
Color Variation: Hound’s primary color is green and black. Since this navigation app will be universal for all campuses, we will be swapping out our brand colors for other university colors. We focused on West Chester University, University of Pittsburgh, and University of Miami when showcasing how these colors could be personalized based on the school.
Design System: For the design system we added color variations of the different schools, typography, iconography, buttons, effects, controls, micro animations, and the grid layout. In each one it displays the whole system for the app and kiosk for universities to go into and change as needed.
Conclusion
Hound’s goal is to make navigation around campus easier and more manageable throughout all college campuses, and with the flexible branding and minor adjustments, it can be applied to any campus. While maintaining a familiar UI to other navigation apps, we accomplished a simple, friendly, and useful application that has potential to grow into a larger project overall.
