Overview

Sometimes it is difficult as a college student in a big university to find important information such as dining options and laundry services. Penn Mobile was an Android app launched by Penn Labs in 2015 that aimed to solve this problem by aggregating dining, laundry, fitness, and group study room services into one easily accessible interface.

The app redesign was launched in January 2020.

Target Users

University of Pennsylvania students that use Android phones.

My Role

I was the sole UI/UX designer for the Android team of the student organization, Penn Labs, and led the Penn Mobile redesign through wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. I worked closely with the product engineers to understand technical feasibility and business developers to better understand student needs.

The Problem

We collected critique on Penn Mobile from student users through online reviews, word of mouth, and informal feedback sessions. Some of the main complaints we heard were:

• Lack of alignment with iOS app: student users complained that the Android app lacked the clean design and many features of the iOS version of the application.

• No list of reservations: our group study room (GSR) bookings screen does not display a list of reservations that the user has already booked.

Project Goal

Based on these insights, we realized that the biggest problem of the Android version was that we needed to better organize the features of the app to make the experience more delightful for users. There were two main changes we wanted to implement:

• Improve Home screen navigation and personalization

• Change flow of GSR booking process to be more intuitive

Ideation

Home Screen Layout

Though Penn Mobile has over 12 different available features, there are just 5 features that users use on a regular basis: News, Dining, Laundry, Group Study Rooms, and Important Dates. Transforming the Home screen into a card layout reduces friction and time required for the user to find the information that they need to access on a routine basis. 

However, not all information should be put on the Home screen. Users should be able to quickly browse through the Home screen cards for key information; they should be directed to the respective screens if they want more information about a particular service. Thus, to minimize clutter and increase expediency, the Dining, Laundry, and Group Study Rooms screens have the option to select favorites; only favorited items will be shown on the cards of the Home screen. If the user has not selected any favorites, a default 1-3 items will be shown instead.

With this in mind, I created a lo-fi and hi-fi mockup of the new Home screen.

The Product

Final Designs

I delivered high-fidelity designs to the Android engineering team. After some discussion about the technical constraints and possibilities of the design, the engineers decided to also add a Dark Mode to increase accessibility. We also decided to change the hamburger menu to a bottom navigation bar to further simplify the number of options immediately available to users.

Moving Forward

There are some features of iOS that remain to be implemented, such as tracking of dining dollars spent, user authentication, and mobile advertisements. There are also other services that can be added as features in Penn Mobile, including a map of study spots on campus, access to mental wellness resources, and integration with other Penn Labs products.