Brendan Washnak
StarMart
A five week project in which I collaborated with a team of peers to develop a new concept for Starship Technologies. We focused on increasing human-to-human connection along with setting up a local market for artists, crafters, and more, in order to increase the sense of community at Purdue.
Role
Design, Research
Date
February 2023
Duration
5 weeks
Project Overview
Problem
Looking at the data we gathered from interviews and surveys, we found that not many have considered Starship as something more than a delivery robot, and that only 60% of Purdue students have ever used Starship.
Solution
A market made by Purdue students, for Purdue students, featuring hand-made goodies and other miscellaneous items, allowing each student to buy and sell as they please.
"I like how you can actually support small local businesses and are classmates with them." — Lizzy Jarrell
Primary Research
Survey Data
The goal of our survey was to get a general understanding of the Purdue student's familiarity with Starship, possible features they would like to be added, difficulties they have had with Starship, and any additional comments. Below are some bullet points summarizing common trends we witnessed in the data.
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Complaints about long wait times.
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Many requests for more personalization.
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People are interested in medicine and other small good deliveries.
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With the furthered understanding of Purdue students, we began forming an idea of the different apps we could create to solve these issues, while ensuring that we increased human-to-human connection.
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Interviews
We sat down and interviewed fellow Purdue students, gathering more in depth data than our survey provided us. We found a lot of similarities between our interview feedback and the survey feedback, reinforcing our belief that we we're on the right track about different issues we could look at solving.
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Source: Starship Technologies
"It’d be nice if they could ship school supplies, like pencils if you really need them or something." — Anonymous Student
Secondary Research
Starship Information
We wanted to gain a better understanding of just what we could do with a Starship, and that began at investigating more about them. According to dimensions.com, a Starship robot is 26.7" by 22.4", with a height of 21.8" and weight of 50 pounds. It is capable of carrying 22 pounds, meaning we have quite a bit of freedom with what we do in relation to it.
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All of these factors gave us confidence that whatever idea we went with, the Starship robot would be able to handle it struggle-free.
Brainstorming
App Ideas
Together we started an ideas thread, a place where anyone could throw out an idea for the group to discuss. We thought of many things, ranging from a microwave inside of a Starship to sending themed letters to any student. Quickly we all latched onto the idea of creating a market, however, we didn't know quite what type of market we wanted to create.
Market Considerations
It was difficult for my team and I to decide on a market as there are many options out there, so we revised our scope and narrowed our focus. We agreed to focus on Purdue students, people similar to us, and figure out what problems they were facing. Some markets we thought of are listed below.
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Hungry people around campus
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Artists
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People looking to give stuff away
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In the end, we decided to take two of our core ideas and merge them together, creating StarMart, a marketplace for anything Purdue, but still placing a heavy emphasis on homemade goods.
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Ideation
Sketches
We placed a heavy focus on sketches in order to get a better understanding of the app we all wanted to create. Together, we collaborated on different designs and ideas, eventually bringing them all together in our digital mockup.
Digital Designs
Our digital mockup was the first iteration of StarMart and how we imagined it would look. We conducted a feedback session between the group members and decided what we liked and what we didn't. In the end we cut the star rating, community section, and some extra, unnecessary features.
Mockups
With everything near-finalized, we began working on our final mockups. We prioritized showcasing our core screens in order to help users understand what we were going for.
User Experience
We created this very brief scenario in order to showcase how we intended our app to flow. It is important to note at this time we were not aware of what was expected from us, therefore resulting in lower quality work.
My Contribution
I contributed to the core idea of the app along with making the sketches, digital images, and mockups. Additionally, I interviewed two people and created a survey that obtained 112 responses from Purdue students after being parsed. Overall, I have a lot less to show for this project than the others, as I was not completely sure about the expectations yet.