CMU students on campus. Image from CMU
<aside> 🍉 While UX usually resides in digital spaces, it’s actually all around us, specifically all around CMU! Read this week’s Editor’s Pick to learn about prevalent UX problems on campus and possible solutions to these problems. How many have you experienced?
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Have you experienced grueling hours of waiting in office hour (OH) queues just to get help for a single problem? OH exists in order to help students in a particular course get clarification about homework or general concepts, but with busy queues — especially for large STEM courses — students aren’t necessarily receiving the best help they could get.
🫂 Hiring more TAs: more helpers means more help!
⏰ Shorter, but more frequent OH timeslots: prevents lines from building up and provides multiple opportunities for people to get help.
🫵 You! : provide feedback to your TAs/professors or build a tool yourself to fix this issue!
The recent change to a 10 minute passing period between classes might have done more harm than good. Trying to get from Posner to Wean proves nearly impossible. What if you wanted to ask your professor a quick question after class but you have to rush to the next?
⏳ A Longer Passing Period: just 5 extra minutes could create a much more relaxing, stress-free experience for many CMU students.
📏 Factoring distance into class location: prioritizing shorter distances between back-to-back classes when booking rooms for classes can solve this problem without changing the 10 minute passing period time!
Have an hour in between classes and want to grab a quick lunch at the UC? Be prepared for long lines that sprawl outside of the general restaurant area. Especially for students who don’t have much time to eat before having to get to lecture, visually long lines mean that they most likely will choose to skip lunch instead — decreasing overall productivity and wellness.
🍽️ Promoting GrubHub as an option: paying ahead reduces the time each exchange of food and money takes, making the lines go by quicker.
🎁 Free food around campus: many clubs/orgs have done this before, and at a larger scale this can reduce lines by giving students more choice. Chartwells is an option for this!