CGT 17208 - Project 4 Final Documentation 1

Project 4 “Purdue Everywhere”

Tiernan Hubbard, Alex Wills, Pat Miniutti, & Nicolas Pelkey

Purdue University

CGT 172 UX Design Studio 1

Dr. Colin Gray

April 26, 2022

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Table of Contents
Table of Contents 2

Summary 3
Project Goal 3
Primary Project Attributes 3

Process & Solution Creation 3

Process 3
Solution 4
Research 4
Primary Research - Campus Thoughts 4
Secondary Research - Online Research 5
Interviews 5
Interview 1
Interview 2
Interview 3:
Interview 4
Interview 5
Iteration 9
Team Invisible Feedback/Suggestions 9
Sketches and Drawings 10

Works Cited/References 12
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Summary
Project Goal:
With this final project, our goal was to improve the BGR experience and explore the
entirety of this pre-semester experience and week-long introduction to life at Purdue. We
conducted brainstorming sessions and investigated ways to keep incoming students engaged
throughout BGR and particularly tackle the communication and friendship development issues
that can be and are a part of students’ experiences at BGR. In addition, we aimed to improve the
social aspect of the BGR groups and facilitate communication between group members and alter
the overall outlook of students upon BGR as a whole.
Primary Project Attributes:
Mantra:
Make friends for at least one week and hopefully relations and friendships can extend beyond
BGR.
Cores:
Starting conversation and connecting to BGR group mates.
User Group:
Shy incoming freshman student actively seeking to be more social, not from the West
Lafayette/Lafayette Purdue area.

Process & Solution Creation

Process:
Our initial process began with first trying to identify what demographic of people needed
to be addressed in order to try and improve BGR. It was hard to collect an overall general
consensus of whether BGR was ‘good’, or not, as different students tended to have varying
views on what they enjoyed and did not enjoy as a whole.
In order to collect more insight, each of us conducted several interviews with our
roommates and friends alike, in doing so we were able to identify what our focus group should
be. We found that, while overly-sociable and outgoing individuals were able to derive at least
some enjoyment and fulfilment from BGR, individuals that potentially had more social anxiety
or were not as outspoken or confident often ended up leaving BGR feeling unsatisfied or
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disappointed. Considering this demographic accounts for a rather large percentage of students
attending BGR every year, we felt compelled to develop a solution that would help cater towards
them in the same way it caters to the other demographic.
Solution:
Once we had everything set into place, we decided that we wanted to make BGR a better
environment for creating conversation and meeting new people. To do so, every BGR group will
have smaller subgroups of 3-4 people that do activities together. This group size is intentional, as
it is best for creating conversation between people (citation needed). These subgroups will be
randomly selected by the Team Leaders.
The activities will have the groups go away from the main group so they can have the
time and space to talk amongst themselves. The activities will tend to be something simple, like
walking in the horticulture park or partaking in a Purdue tradition at a landmark. In order to
allow for some wiggle room in meeting new people, these groups will be randomly changed
twice every day. The exact timings will likely differ, but they would most likely switch at the
beginning of each day and after lunch. Our expectation for fitting this into the packed schedule
of BGR is to cut out the time that most students feel is wasted, such as hours of ice breakers
every day.
Research:
For developing our solution to the grand question with many varying responses posed in
this project, we planned our research around campus thoughts and online research regarding the
BGR experience and its social aspects and student takes on their time either attending or not
attending BGR before their first official semester at Purdue. This research was done through both
seeing campus thoughts, which was a part of our interviews, and through online/traditional
research.
Primary Research - Campus Thoughts:
For checking out campus thoughts, our interview stage played a heavy role in asking
questions to students particularly wrapping up their freshman year at Purdue, since they will
have a fresher outlook and take on their experience or non-experience with BGR. The main
thoughts that freshman students had were for the most part negative regarding the social and
activity aspects of BGR and the lack of variety in activities among other unfortunate, collective
thoughts on their time with BGR or choosing not to attend. Our user group was officially
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developed from these interviews and us choosing to focus on the social aspects of the BGR
groups rather than the BGR experience as a whole, since we have no influence or knowledge on
the inner workings of the activity planning and group randomisation of the BGR staff and
Purdue.
Secondary Research - Online Research:
Environments for interaction:
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/implement/physical-social-environment/places-for-interac
tion/main
● Parks and food are good stops
● Walking works
Optimal group size for conversation:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-9280.00292
● 3-5 is optimal
● 5 is pushing it
Interviews:
The most important piece of our project process and solution creation was the interviews
we performed with students who had attended BGR in the past as incoming freshman and to hear
their experiences about BGR. These interviews were great for understanding more about past
BGR experiences besides our own and to gain valid opinions on peoples’ times in BGR and what
could be improved or changed in the future.
Interview #1: Unnamed female student
● Went to BGR in 2020
● Liked BGR, thought that it was a good opportunity to meet people from different majors
and residence halls
● COVID restrictions limited the experience (speaking events were virtual)
● BGR made it easier to learn more about campus, such as the layout, resources, clubs, and
opportunities
● TL acted as a mentor during BGR
● The fountain run was fun, but the requirement of wearing a mask did dampen the
experience
● Found some of the icebreaker activities to be fun and helped to get to know each other
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● Feels that it’s better for shy people to be in smaller groups than be in larger groups
● Thinks that it would be better to learn more about academic areas on campus as well as
some off-campus areas, such as the Chauncey area
● Thinks that the dancing activities would’ve been better appreciated if they were done in
moderation or just optional altogether
○ Maybe different activities would’ve been better
○ A larger focus on the academic buildings would’ve been better since that would
allow students to get a better idea on where their classes are located
■ Less of a focus on the engineering buildings would also have been good
Interview #2: Unnamed female student
● Went to BGR in 2020
● Liked walking around and looking at the different buildings, but thought that it was
difficult talking to others due to being shy
● Liked the different activities, but didn’t enjoy the dancing and felt that some of the social
activities were forced and unnatural
● Felt lonely due to there being so many people that you are distant to
○ Can’t really remember names
○ Feels that they didn’t really attend BGR
○ Thinks that it’s better to make friend groups on their own
● COVID restrictions limited activities, especially since they’re immunocompromised
○ Was often frustrated at students in their group who didn’t wear their masks
outdoors
● Nowadays, they find speaking events to be fine, but during the time they thought that the
speaking events forced and unmemorable
● Felt that a more detailed explanation of each building and knowing where more buildings
were located
○ Felt that covering buildings that relate to certain majors would’ve been better
○ Thought that they helped with the dining courts
● Liked the TL and thought that they were friendly and didn’t try to force any activities
○ Can’t really remember their names
○ Hard to remember both the names and faces of other group members
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● Didn’t do the fountain run

● Enjoyed the den pop experience and felt that it helped get into the college experience
○ Thinks that the Purdue experience should be how to make a chaotic place feel
more peaceful
● Felt that BGR would be overwhelming to students who are shy and living off-campus
○ Easing the college experience into those students would’ve been better
○ Thought that BGR was more focused on students who live in the residence halls
and thought that it really doesn’t go along with Purdue’s way of making people
feel like they belong
■ Felt that BGR focused too much on activities that these students aren’t
really going to do, such as the stadium events or the dining halls
○ Felt that teams met way too early in the morning
■ Thought that meeting after lunch would've been better
■ Can’t really participate well during the activities very early
■ Hinders social activities
Interview #3: Unnamed male student
● Self-described as outgoing and friendly, not shy
● Found that BGR was enjoyable, if not a little boring
● Didn’t really connect with his BGR group
○ Found that a lot of his group was made up of quiet, shy individuals
○ Thinks maybe he should have been more outgoing to those who felt ‘closed off’
● Thinks BGR is much more appropriately set up for those who are outgoing
○ Not made for those who are introverted
Interview #4: Unnamed international male student
● International student
● Finds himself to be more introverted and shy
● Felt that BGR was enjoyable, but overwhelming and a little chaotic.
○ Due to not knowing much of his surroundings or environment, he felt that he did
not make any personal connections during BGR
● Was able to meet with other international students; stresses that finding like-minded
individuals was key for him in being able to start making friends.
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Interview #5: Unnamed female student

● Went to BGR in the 2021 fall semester
● Was in-between liking and disliking their BGR experience, though was glad to meet new
people and make a few friends that lasted a good majority of the year
● Was not too bothered by, but certainly annoyed by the COVID restrictions
● Finds herself to be outgoing and amicable with others, but when working and studying
prefers her alone time
● Did not know really anybody here at all prior to coming to Purdue and BGR
● Was able to do the fountain run and other activities, but wasn’t particularly enthused by
any of them
● More interested in the social aspects of getting to know her group members and other
people like her rather than the activity aspects
● Was kind of done by the Friday of BGR week because of the over-exposure to everyone
and lots of people on campus, preferred meeting those who liked quiet time with a few or
couple of people rather than a whole group of loud people
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Iteration
Our iterations along the way came from addressing the below feedback and suggestions
and ideas to discuss further in our solution ideation and design process and from the criques as
well as taking advantage of the desk critiques to improve and ideate before settling on our final
solution. Our pre-critique thoughts and critique suggestions blended together in our design
process to create our final solution which we presented.
Team Invisible Feedback/Suggestions:
● Don’t generalize and reduce personal opinion
● Volume during BGR and potential party/event damage
● Addressing social input during these events and shy people interacting with these events
● “Looking to be more social” user group → How does being out of state affect
relationships and connections with Indiana students?
● Profiling issues and outlying students in BGR groups.
● Importance of finding common interests and starting conversations along those interests
● Smart to focus on students interests during BGR
● Signs and finding people with common interests
○ How to improve this?
● Be specific with interviews → Narrow down direction!
● Disparity with off-campus students
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Sketches and Drawings

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Works Cited/References
● https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/implement/physical-social-environment/places-for
-interaction/main
● https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-9280.00292