Aalto Meetups

Interviewing target user
Reimagining the space using LEGO
Early stage prototype of the app
Detailed screen of the prototype

Inspiration

Google forms questionnaire and Facebook group that are currently being used by Aalto entrepreneurship society for organizing meetups during lunch breaks.

What it does

It is an online application to help Aalto academic staff and students have meaningful offline conversations.

How we built it

We followed the double diamond design process. We started with rapid research. We spent a couple of hours to do individual research: desktop research and user interviewing (business students from the U-wing).

After individual research, we shared our insights and redesigned the brief: we wanted to focus on semi-active business students. By semi-active we mean people who are not part of clubs or are organizing things, but attend events here and there. And the problem we decided to tackle is social interaction and well-being: of how to make people have meaningful conversations that would lead to long-term (professional) relationships.

We had two rounds of ideation and used two methods. Firstly, we used traditional brainstorming with post-its in 4 categories 1) physical 2) technology-related 3) random ideas 4) silly ideas. We produced around 50 ideas that we then combined and altered during the process. We quickly visualised our ideas with different kind of paper prototypes and gathered user feedback during the Saturday lunch. The users we interviewed were business students who happened to be here in the event as organizers or attendees. Total number of interviewed users in this point was 7. Our meet-ups idea got the most positive feedback.

The second round of ideation was about the physical space. We wanted to get more close to the physicality of the space, so we did a round of ideation with Legos. We came up with 5-7 ideas that we discussed with our mentors.

After this we had to decide on what to focus on. Through intense discussion and a positive conflict within the team, we decided to move forward with the Aalto Meetups idea. We divided the work: some people worked on the wireframes, while one person started visualizing in Adobe XD, one person worked on prototype for Android and one person worked on the story and final presentation.

We did not have time to validate our final prototype with the users which is demoed in our final presentation, but that would be the natural next step.

Challenges we ran into

The brief included the request to design for the U-wing lobby in Aalto University main building. Having gotten to the ideation phase, we struggled in coming up with ideas of how the physical space could be used in relation to the problems the target users are currently facing. Also, we felt like Aalto already has sufficient amount of spaces for different kinds of needs.

Our main idea for the space was modular furniture and rich vegetation. We felt like modularity would allow the space to serve a variety of purposes: as a lounge that its users could recreate over and over again depending on their needs, but also for pop-up events and store, co-working areas etc. We felt that the “paradise on campus” feeling is currently missing from the Aalto university campus. However, we decided to proceed with the Aalto Meetups idea as it would not need any modifications to the already existing physical spaces; instead, it would allow more interaction between Aalto students and staff, and could also lead to greater collaboration between students from different departments.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

an online app that is viable add-on feature to be integrated with the already existing Aalto Spaces app being able to think of transition between the online and offline realms

What we learned

teamwork, empathy

What's next for Aalto Meetups

An ad campaign and webpage to advertise Aalto Meetups with the aim of receiving 1000 subscribers before launching the application;
Promotion in classes, word-of-mouth, flyers, table-toppers, promo events;
Fundraising (either using the resources available through the University) or approaching external investors;
An add-on feature to be integrated with Aalto Spaces.