Graphic design promoting TouchRealm, a digital experience, featuring an illustration of two young people with backpacks looking at a mobile device, with a suburban neighborhood background, and the touchscreen interface showing the TouchRealm logo and start button.

The brief we received for this project was ‘How might we reduce cost-of-living pressures for people in Australia?’ We intended to refine the problem space and eventually work towards a creative human-centred solution for a demographic of Australians.

To discover and understand different aspects of the concept, I did desk research into academic databases and articles covering three separate cost-of-living-related issues: the rising cost of food, the increasing cost of rent, and the mental stress of financial difficulty. Eventually, I decided to explore rental inflation further.

Client

N/A

Team

Max Heytman | Liuhui Tang | Kangqi Song

My roles

Deliverables

Design Articulation | Low & Mid-fidelity prototype | Mock-up | Research Report

Research | UI/UX Design

Infographic chart titled '20 Years of Rent Pressure Solutions Scan' showing the timeline of real estate and housing affordability initiatives from 2000 to 2022, including MoneySmart, realestate.com.au, 'Freeze Rent Now', and StudyAustralia, with illustrations of people, a building, and icons representing companies, government, and society.

Research

As a group, we looked into current solutions that covered different aspects of renters' inflation and stress. Our solutions scan summarises the completed research and critiques we made about the features those services lack.

After preliminary research, our group conducted more research. We conducted ten twenty-minute interviews with international students renting in Australia, with different cultural backgrounds and duration of stay. We also completed an online ethnography to support our findings in interviews, analysing online forums and discussions to discover prevalent issues.

Infographic illustrating four challenges faced by students: affordability and financial constraints, lack of support from educational institutions and government, personal engagement and inspection with property, and financial and renter stress, with accompanying text and icons representing each issue.
A profile summary of Qijia Wang, a young female international student from China, including her photo, background, motivations, frustrations, and goals for her postgraduate studies in Australia.

Problem Framing

Profile page of Hiroshi Nakamura, featuring a black-and-white photograph of a young man with a backpack, section headers in bold, personal information, and a yellow highlight with a quote about studying abroad.

After reflecting on our research and thematic analysis findings, we reframed the cost-of-living problem statement to establish a solution area. Our new problem statement establishes our target audience and our practical goal. 

“How might we leverage educational institutions and foster community engagement to aid affordable, quality housing solutions for international students?”

Lo-fi prototyping

For user testing, we created a low-fidelity prototype of our design. We use cardboard and paper to make a screen where elements can be swapped out manually, mirroring the intended interaction. We set goals for the user to complete and record feedback on our prototype using the think-aloud process.

A group of people working at a table with laptops, papers, a pen, a measuring tape, and a cardboard box.
Three young people working together at a table covered with papers, notebooks, a laptop, and a mouse in a brightly lit room with large windows.
People assembling a cardboard and paper project on a white table.
A cardboard game board with multiple handwritten questions and answer options for a kitchen-related quiz. The left side has the question, "Would you like a kitchen?" with options: "Shared kitchen," "No," and a score indicator "8/8." The right side has small cards with numbers and words, including "No" and "Personal Kitchen." There is also a drawing of a person with broken items and a score card showing "400."

We proposed installing a kiosk across Usyd where users could play a gamified survey and choose their ideal amenities and accommodation features in Sydney. The challenge is to balance the amenities with their ideal weekly budget, with visual feedback of an icon character reacting as they have to ‘carry the load’ of the options chosen by the user.

After completing our user goals, we conducted a post-interaction interview using a System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire, evaluating the usability of individual interactions and the overall system.

Mock-up poster

After evaluating the feedback we received, we made a mock-up and poster with a working prototype to pitch our idea.

A detailed infographic about TouchRealm, an integrated rent education strategic service for international students, including sections on its key features, design process, further user tests, and a visual of a touch kiosk with an illustration of students.