Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Final Feature Story
One of my favorite classes this semester has been feature writing. It’s helped me grow as a writter and pushed me outside of my comfort zone. As a journalist, I’m used to writting short and to the point. I thought my decriptive writting was weak and I hated having to do it. However, this class gave me tons of tips and tricks! Fearure writting is now one of my favorite styles.
Sigma Alpha Omega
For my final piece, I followed the Christian social sorority Sigma Alpha Omega. They are a small organization and close to losing their chapter if they fail to recruit more members. I spent some time with the three members of their recruitment committee to discuss their plans for their upcoming spring recruitment.
SAO sisters hand out goodie bags like these with candy and encouragement to potential recruits.
Read my full story here.
User Experience Reflection
Reflection for Project 2
My overall goal for this project was to find the best way for students to access and manage their meal plan balances. Going off my user research in project one, I found there were many improvements students wanted for their meal plan. This was particularly for the punch system. To access their punch and dining dollars balances, students have to log into myMadison and then take that link to a seperate site from card services. That’s a lot of hoops to jump through for a simple task. I wrote two narratives going into greater detail about other pains students face when managing their meal plans. My solution to these issues is an app that tells students their balances, helps them manage their plan with reminders, and gives them the option to share their extra punches.
User Research Reflection
Improving the JMU Punch System
For my user experience project, I looked at ways to improve the JMU punch system. After talking to several students, it was clear there was an issue of wasted punches. My solution to this was to create a sort of punch sharing system. The system would work best as an app through card services. It needed to be easy to understand and use. My vision for the app was for it to operate similar to Venmo. Venmo allows you to send money between users; the card services app could allow students to send punches their extra punches to other students.
My main goal of this project was to come up with a solution the students would like. After collecting interview and survey results, I thought an app to share punches would be best. I was surprised by how many ideas students had. I learned a lot about using personas for this assignment; they were the most helpful because I could imagine real students and how they would need the app.
Madison Heiser 