Hospitality Library

Hong Kong Vocational Training Centre

The Vocational Training Council (VTC) stands as the premier institution for vocational education, training, and professional development in Hong Kong. The Hospitality department want to revamp the online library as the current one is in low usage rate.

My Role

I was responsible for every aspect of the design process. This included conducting user research, developing personas, creating user flows, wireframes, prototyping, and designing the final UI. Additionally, I designed the logo and promotional materials, ensuring a cohesive and engaging experience throughout the project.

The Challenges

Our goal was to develop a user-friendly online library that enhances the reading experience. Rather than merely making a typical online library website, we aimed to establish a meaningful relationship with users, addressing their broader academic needs and creating a versatile platform adaptable to various educational contexts.

The Approach

To understand user needs and identify the root causes of low usage rate, we conducted comprehensive quantitative research targeting all user groups, including tutors, department staff, and students. This approach ensured we captured a holistic view of the current system's challenges and opportunities, our research goals were multifaceted, aiming to:

Identify existing website issues from various user perspectives.
Understand user behaviors and preferences in accessing academic resources.
Assess the effectiveness of current features and functionalities.
Uncover unmet needs and potential areas for improvement.

On the other hand, I also conducted interviews with 6 hospitality students to gain a deeper understanding of their needs in doing academic tasks and gather additional insights with greater details.

The Discovery and insights

3 main struggles that essential users are facing:

Lack of mobile compatibility, resulting in a poor reading experience on mobile devices.
Absence of a customizable homepage, forcing users to spend time searching for relevant books.
An outdated website design that lacks up-to-date, industry-relevant materials, compelling students to seek resources elsewhere.

While these pain points were identified through quantitative research, our user interviews revealed additional meaningful insights. Undoubtedly, the lack of mobile-friendliness is a critical issue for students. Interestingly we found that

Five out of six interviewees regularly read and conduct research on their mobile devices during idle time and commutes, later switching to desktop or laptop computers for assignment work.

Furthermore, group sharing functionality emerged as a desired feature for collaborative projects. This finding brings us closer to understanding the core problem: users are not just reading but simultaneously gathering information for their projects. This dual purpose is the primary reason they utilize the library's resources.

These insights highlight the need for a more integrated, mobile-friendly platform that supports both individual research and collaborative work, aligning with the modern student's workflow and preferences.

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Emily is passionate hospitality student at VTC, balancing her studies with part-time work at a local hotel. She relies heavily on digital resources for her coursework and practical training.

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The Ideas

It is evident that a simple online library is insufficient to meet users' needs. Instead, we need to expand our vision and develop a comprehensive learning resource hub that assists users in their academic tasks. Our goal is to create an essential tool for Hospitality students to use on a daily basis.To achieve this, we will begin by designing a workflow that aligns with students' working patterns. This approach will encompass:

A tailored homepage that caters to individual preferences and needs
An enhanced reading experience optimized for various devices
Robust research tools integrated into the mobile interface

By focusing on these key areas, we aim to create a seamless, user-centric platform that supports students throughout their academic journey, from casual reading to in-depth research and collaborative projects. This holistic approach will transform the traditional online library into an indispensable academic resource that adapts to the modern student's lifestyle and learning habits.

Wireframe of homepage > book detail page > Reading page & boomark tools

Usability test

We then quickly move forward to Lofi prototype, as we want to quickly exampify if the flow can addressed the major challenges, if not we can move back to ideate process for other solution.

I conducted a moderated test comprising different scenarios along with a general usability assessments. We assign different tasks to user to test out the effectiveness of our approach. The following are the major tasks.

We presented five users with a task based scenario, aiming to observe how intuitively and easily they could navigate the website and accomplish the tasks.

1) Efficient mobile research:

Search for and begin with the assigned book
Locate a specific paragraph and save it as a note
Retrieve, manage edit the saved notes.

2) Group project sharing:

Team up with others to complete a task.
Read and identify a paragraph to save as a note.
Create a group and add another user to it.
Share saved notes within the group.
Other team member to edit the book you saved.

Feedback and suggestions:

Robust the Note taking tools:
We enhanced the tools by introducing a screen capture function, allowing users to quickly capture specific parts of content instead of highlighting text line by line. This feature enables users to capture both images and text simultaneously, streamlining the process of gathering information.

We enhanced the bookmark tool by enabling a screen capture function, this feature significantly improves efficiency in their research process.

In addition to capturing information from books on the website, the ability to save external information for projects is also crucial for users. This functionality allows students to integrate diverse resources and materials into their academic work, enhancing the depth and quality of their research.

Beside the capturing information from the book in the website , capable to save external information in their project is also important.

New branding

To get rid of the old and outdated image, we designed a logo with a set of UI to bring a refreshment of the project. Given that

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The Impact

The project has successfully enhanced user engagement and utilization of the library website, demonstrating significant progress in achieving its objectives. Key metrics show strong performance, with an average session duration of 10.6 minutes, indicating meaningful user interactions with the platform. Additionally, the usage rate increased by 56%, reflecting a marked improvement in user adoption and satisfaction. However, users expressed a strong desire for group-oriented features like commenting on bookmarks and project collaboration, which would enhance teamwork and academic versatility. Due to project timeline constraints, these features were not feasible in this phase but remain a high-priority demand for future updates.