Purdue students require books for their classes, but libraries are difficult to navigate and students don’t have time to go in person. Students need a more mobile, effortless system for picking up and dropping off books.
Pictured above: The library shelves that students currently have to navigate to find their books on campus.
I first conducted background research on the public's perception of Starships to explore how an automated book delivery service would impact both library patrons and staff.
Understanding the public perception of Starships was critical. People tended to see the robots as either:
I discovered that Starships have low performance with traffic (pedestrians and vehicles), but are more environmentally friendly compared to non-automated delivery.
I then interviewed three Purdue students, including both undergraduate and graduate students, to better understand the problems students face when getting their books through Purdue libraries.
Despite finding several pros, I still discovered some drawbacks that left a few users concerned. These include the chance of delayed delivery, and online libraries or book stores (such as Amazon) competing with our service.
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An incoming student needs textbooks for class but they don't have time to go out and get them. So they use the Starship app to check out the books and waits for them to arrive at their dorm while they gets their chores done.
My team and I decided as a final solution to redesign both the physical Starship interior and the mobile app towards an automated book delivery service. To keep things consistent, users will still use the same Starship application, but on a different mode than food delivery.
I then sketched an idea to enable users to both purchase books AND check out books from the library.
However, after asking our users, I realized that this would be too broad of a scope and narrowed things down to solely book check in/check out at Purdue libraries.
I conducted concept testing on my sketches with two students- one regular library patron and one Starship user. I focused the discussion on the following:
Under what conditions would this service be the most convenient?
When questioned, students thought our service to be the most useful in bad weather or with a busy schedule.
What problems could potentially occur?
Students were the most concerned with delivery wait times and damaged or stolen orders.
Following concept testing, I realized that I failed to consider the safety and security of books inside the bot during shipment. To combat this, I designed a book cubby system that could easily switch between food and book delivery.
For extra safety, I also added a security tag system and a digital book condition report to help ensure users that their orders will arrive in prime condition.
I took inspiration from the original Starship app to design wire-frames of a hypothetical ‘Book’ mode that would allow students to check out and return their books at different libraries.
I also created a wire-frame of the book condition report, which would be completed after returning a book in the Starship app.
I then tested the usability of the wire-frames by presenting users with a scenario of checking out library books with the app and then observing their actions as they interacted with each screen.
Users found the drop-down menu to be too effortful and wanted a better way to switch between 'Books' and 'Food & Drink' mode. As a result, I made sure to add two separate pages for each mode on the navigation bar.
Each library can be browsed for book availability, and books can be searched by name, class, ISBN, author, and title.
Finally, users can also easily report the physical condition of their books in the Starship app.
Thank you to my professors and my classmates for giving me the opportunity to challenge myself with this project and work in such a supportive environment.
Set project goals early on.
Creating a set of goals right as we started helped me stay on track at each phase of the design process.
Communicating decisions properly is key.
Being my first UX project in an academic setting, this project taught me the power of clear communication quickly. Effectively explaining my decisions and the reasoning behind them allowed to me to receive more solid feedback.
