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ma(i)ze
PROJECT TYPE:
Senior Coursework Project - UX Research Course
PROJECT TOOLS:
Miro, Figma, & Google Suite!
TEAM & ROLES:
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Ian: UX Researcher
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Sahaja: UX Researcher
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Yuijin: UX Researcher
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Rachel: UX Researcher
THE ISSUE?
At the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, getting around campus isn’t always as easy as it should be. Students often rely on standard navigation apps to find their way, but those tools aren't built with college campuses in mind. That’s where Ma(i)ze comes in — a campus-specific navigation app designed to help students move through U-M with ease, whether they’re headed to a new class, a club meeting, or just trying to find the nearest bus stop.
WHAT'S THE PROJECT GOALS?
Apps like Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Waze are great for getting from city to city — but when it comes to navigating campus? They fall short. With Ma(i)ze, our goal is to fill that gap by creating a navigation app specifically designed for the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. We’re building a tool that offers detailed, student-focused guidance to help Wolverines get where they need to go — faster and with less guesswork.
DATA COLLECTION & ANALYSIS
To kick off our case study for Ma(i)ze, my team and I conducted eight contextual inquiry interviews with students from a range of class years — with a special focus on first-years, who we believed would benefit most from a campus navigation tool like this. During the sessions, we asked participants targeted questions and had them complete navigation-related tasks while we observed, recorded, and later transcribed their responses. From there, we coded the transcripts to highlight key pain points, then synthesized our findings into an affinity diagram using Miro. This process helped us uncover shared frustrations and real-world use cases to guide our design decisions.
Google Forms Responses & Google Sheets Graphs
After reviewing and organizing our contextual inquiry findings in Miro, we built on that foundation by creating an 18-question Google Forms survey based on the major pain points we uncovered. We distributed the survey and received 18 responses. To make sense of the data, we used Google Sheets to create four visualizations, each comparing responses across two to three related questions. These graphs helped us spot patterns in student navigation habits and frustrations, and they further validated the need for a campus-specific solution like Ma(i)ze.
DELIVERABLES
With both our interview and survey data in hand, we moved into the deliverables phase. Our team created two personas, one journey map, and one storyboard — all rooted in the insights we gathered.
We began by building out our personas: Jennie Kim and Noah Schnapp. Their attributes were drawn directly from patterns in our Google Forms responses. The majority of respondents were third- and fourth-year students living off campus, which shaped Noah’s persona. Our next largest group was first-year students living in on-campus residence halls, inspiring the creation of Jennie.
Once our personas were established, we developed a journey map to represent the current state — what it’s like navigating campus using existing navigation tools. We then created a storyboard to show the future state — how Ma(i)ze could transform the experience for students navigating the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor campus.
Personas
Journey Map (Current State)
Storyboard (Future State)
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WHAT'S THE NEXT STEPS?
Although Ma(i)ze was developed over just 10 weeks as a class project, the data we collected has real potential beyond the classroom. Ideally, the next phase would involve building interactive prototypes and conducting user testing to refine the app — but realistically, our team has decided to move on to other projects.
That said, the insights we gathered could still be valuable. Our research captured students' thoughts, emotions, and frustrations when navigating U-M’s campus, along with their suggestions for must-have features — like alerts for campus construction or step-by-step directions to classrooms inside buildings. We see an opportunity to pass this data on to the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor as a starting point for building a navigation tool that truly reflects student needs.
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