What Can a Starship Do?

Description of the Project:

In Project 1, we were tasked with repurposing the robots that roam Purdue’s campus daily: Starships. Our goal was to explore Purdue student’s attitudes toward the robots and automated delivery in order to come up with a system or use for Starship that goes above and beyond their current uses to produce new kinds of human-human connections. 

Project Goals

In this project we were aiming to learn about the User Experience process through affinity diagramming, conducting interviews, outlining scenarios, and making mental models in order to help expand the use of Starships across Purdue’s campus. Our goal was to explore Purdue student’s attitudes toward the robots and automated delivery in order to come up with a system or use for Starship that goes above and beyond their current uses to produce new kinds of human-human connections.

Methods Used

The intention of these methods was to research and utilize the information we gained to the best of our ability in order to design a solution that was effective but also efficient and realistic.

In this project we used affinity diagramming, conducted interviews, outlined scenarios, and created mental models in order to help expand the use of Starships across Purdue’s campus.

Through these methods in our project, we gained abundant insights and were able to take advantage of our research into a final product that solves a common problem in an effective way.

Key Findings

Problem Statement: Sick, first-year Purdue students often struggle to know how to take care of themselves in a way that protects the people around them.

Design Question: How can we create a care package for sick, first-year Purdue students that will provide them with the necessary tools to combat common illnesses found on college campuses?

Interviews

To briefly introduce our research through interviews, we were trying to identify Purdue students' sickness problems in order to enable Starships to be a solution to these issues. Through our interviews, we were hoping to get important information about first-year Purdue students' views of Starships on campus, stories about times they have been sick since coming to Purdue, and experiences with Starships.

We interviewed 7 people within the first week of our research to get a better idea of Purdue students’ feelings towards Starships and campus sickness. In our interviews, we found themes of: positive feelings on Starships, frequent campus sickness, lack of knowledge of sickness, and concerns in delivery fees and times.

We found that Purdue students generally hold a positive perspective on Starships. All of our interviewees expressed enthusiasm when presented with our idea of campus care packages, as it should broaden Starship's appeal and target market. Additionally, many mentioned the common action of reaching out to their parents when feeling unwell, thus emphasizing the perceived value of care packages in aiding them during such times.  

Observation Session

Our team conducted an observation session to observe the behavior of the Starships on Purdue’s campus. Prior to this project, our team had never used Starships before. We wanted to get an accurate view of how these Starships work on campus and their procedures. (See Appendix for Observation Field Notes)

Throughout our field note observations, we understood how a Starship would avoid hitting other pedestrians and cars by waiting a brief moment before crossing sidewalk’s, driveways, and bike lanes. When Starships would detect movement from pedestrians on sidewalks it would slow down. We noticed Starships have turn signals. Their turn signals alert pedestrians in front and behind them where they are intending to turn. When needing to change directions, the Starship would stop, then shift its position while stationary in one spot, and then continue moving in its new, desired direction.

From our research, storyboards, interviews, and data, our proposed solution that will best solve and fit the problem of sick Purdue students is the campus care package. This care package solution was designed help students know the items they will need for whatever specific illness they have and will help them get those items from different ways in an efficient way without having to leave their dorm and possibly get other people sick.

Final Solution

Our team designed an alternative from forcing Purdue students to leave the comfort of their dorm to get their necessary health supplies while also avoiding compromising the health of other students.

We created a Starship package delivery service where Starships can go to multiple places and pick up the necessary items for Purdue student’s health. This service would have its own storefront where Purdue students can pick their desired package pertaining to the specific illness they might be suffering from. We specially curated packages from a Flu care package to a Covid-19 care package. The starship would be programmed to make multiple stops, making it an easy one-click solution for students who are sick and unsure how to treat their illness.

The Starships would start their journey at PUSH, which would be their central location. From there, they can be sanitized and an illness-specific care card is placed inside. The Starship then would have the ability to go to other on-campus sights such as 3rd street market and other campus retail locations to obtain the desired items in each order. Each care package then can be customized to the customer’s liking and would include a care card providing the student with specific tools and instructions to help them recover properly.

Personal Contributions

I helped brainstorm possible ideas for a new Starship function. I found a few articles for secondary research regarding illnesses and what people might need in each situation. I participated in the conversation to help to create the problem statement, the design question, and determining what would be included in each care package. Additionally, I conducted 2 interviews and one I transcribed the audio for. But both gave us good insight into the usage of Starships on campus and student’s feelings towards them. I helped brainstorm what to put in each pre-made package corresponding to different illnesses. When prototyping I helped ideate the steps for the first storyboard we made, along with what steps it should take for our project. I helped write the detailed scenario and participated in in-class discussions about ways we could improve and narrow down the scope of our project. I made my own scenario, along with everyone else’s regarding when a student would need to use our function. In the affordances in class activity I added an example to almost every category (request, demand, etc). In class we did an activity where we found some scholarly articles related for references and I found an article related to the common cold. I helped summarize these findings into paragraphs for our documentation. I also went on the field observation activity, and made observations by following a Starship, while Madi took notes. I assisted in the completion of all of Miro board assignments, and I also wrote a majority of our conclusion to the project. Near the end of our project I did a peer evaluation. Madi and I asked 2nd year UX students what they thought of our project. In our final presentation, I presented our solution, our unique features, and our evaluations. Finally, after our final presentation, I helped ensure that our slides accounted for the feedback we were given.

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