Place to Go

A Place to Go is a campus navigation concept that makes inclusive spaces like gender-neutral restrooms, lactation rooms, and low-sensory rooms, etc, easy to find across RIT’s (Rochester Institute of Technology) 91 building campus. Instead of guessing or asking around, students and staff can see what’s nearby and get clear, room-level directions.

In a 24-hour hackathon, I ran secondary research and unstructured interviews, mapped pain points, and co-designed the high-fidelity prototype for MVP.

During desk research, we talked to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Resource Center at RIT about their experience serving students on campus. Below are the comments that really stood out -

Following Hick’s Law, we simplified the user flow for our design to prioritize ease.

AR feature looked promising, but while testing out the feature, navigation failed in tunnels and basements due to unreliable connectivity.

We added step-by-step directions and floor-plans which made this solution reliable, offline-friendly, and scalable. Floor plans already exist for university buildings, which makes it easy to adopt.

We presented the app to individuals (women and gender minorities) available in the room to know their thoughts and get feedback. Some individuals even tried out the prototype and their comments validated our idea.