7. References
1. Cardoso, L. F., Scolese, A. M., Hamidaddin, A., & Gupta, J. (2021). Period poverty and mental health implications among college-aged women in the United States. BMC Women’s Health, 21(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-020-01149-5.
2. Habashi, K., Andersen, S., Patel, D., Leon, G. K., Lee, C., & Simanton, E. (2023). c Cureus, 15(9).
3. Toutain, C. (2019). Barriers to accommodations for students with disabilities in higher education: A literature review. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 32(3), 297-310.
4. Robbins, M. K., Spence, M., & Steeves, E. A. (2022). A cross sectional assessment of basic needs insecurity prevalence and associated factors among college students enrolled at a large, public university in the Southeastern US. BMC Public Health, 22(1), 419.
5. Jasper, C., Le, T. T., & Bartram, J. (2012). Water and sanitation in schools: a systematic review of the health and educational outcomes. International journal of environmental research and public health, 9(8), 2772-2787.
6. Zborowski, M., & Skotnicka, M. (2025). The role of hydration in children and adolescents—A theoretical framework for reviewing recommendations, models, and empirical studies. Nutrients, 17(17), 2841
6. Limitations & Future Plan
Sniffer is currently in the middle of development, after garnering positive feedback from UW students during prototyping. After its is made available in the AppStore, I hope to get more feedback from a wider base of UW students, as further development is limited by how much feedback I recieve. With Sniffer, I hope amenities will be more accessible to those who need them at UW.
What feedback or insights helped your team improve the design? In particular, I got feedback from by A/B Testing which helped. The feedback was to include restrooms in my design and also an indicator of whether or not a building is locked/requires key-card access. I found these two pieces of feedback to be extremely insightful and valuable in making my design the most useful to users.
What challenges your team faced during the project? The main challenge I faces was that I began working a lot later than other teams as I transferred from a different group. I combated this by running my design ideas by the teaching team and my friends/peers to make sure that I was on the right track.
What your team learned from the design and testing process? I learned the most about how to conduct my own design thinking in a methodical way. The process gave me a structure to put down my ideas and build on them, which is something I have struggled with before when designing technology solutions. I especially appreciated learning about user testing and will be employing A/B Testing in the future for designs I create.
What changes your team would make if you had more time? I would like to have had a fully usable app ready if I had more time. I think it would be powerful to be able to debut the usable app along with my design presentation.
How your design could continue to evolve in the future? I think the next evolution would come in the from of actually debuting and app and having people test it. This would allow me to better tailor it to the UW students and general community to ensure it is as useful as possible.
4. Design Solution
1. Home page showing the locations of all amenities in a given area. Amenity categories (microwaves, water refill stations, restrooms, and menstrual products) can be turned on a off so a student can customize their experience.
2. The detail page for a given amenity type that is present in a building that shows every instance of the amenity in the building. There are options to rate and report each instance as broken/missing or report a new instance of the amenity in the building.
3.1 The form to report an amenity as broken/missing.
3.2 If the broken option is chosen, a box opens up for the user to type their report about the amenity being broken.
4. The form to submit a rating for a given instance of an amenity.
5. The form to report a new instance of an amenity that has not been reported before.
6. AI chat-bot that allows a user to quickly find the amenities that they desire near them.
1
2
3.1
4
3.2
5
6
High-fidelity prototype key:
In addition to the results from A/B testing, additional research was done to understand the current app and literature landscape surrounding accessible amenities at UW/other educational institutions..
3. Design Rationale
Analysis of existing apps and websites reveled that none provide up-to-date information on the locations of microwaves, water refill stations, restrooms, or menstrual products on UW campus. They also provide no indication on the quality of the amenities themselves (e.g. if a microwave is dirty or a water refill station is broken):
Literature review further reinforced the need of accessible basic amenities to college students. Numerous targeted insights were garnered including:
1. It is crucial for all areas with menstrual health products to be listed in an app or easily accessible format so that young women can quickly find what they need.
2. Having an easy to access app with different amenities could help disadvantaged students in particular as they spend a disproportionately larger time on campus.
3. Having an anonymous app where people can locate amenities that they may not want to ask others for (e.g. menstrual products) helps people in need access what they need without having to feel uncomfortable or shameful.
4. Not only being aware of the presence of different amenities matters but the quality of those amenities matters as well.
Results:
1. Students preferred iOS - they found the Apple Map design with the rating and reporting systems simple and intuitive.
2. Students preferred layout B as they liked the togglable icons more.
3. Students wanted restrooms to be added as an amenity as the original design only included microwaves, water refill stations, and menstrual products.
4. Students wanted the app to indicate whether a building required key card access or not.
Task scenarios:
1. Find their location on the map
2. Find an amenity icon on a building near their location and click on it
3. Rate one amenity in the selected building
Participants: UW students
How might students effectively use an AI-assisted platform to save time locating good quality microwaves, water refill stations, restrooms, and menstrual products on the UW campus and support their health?
2. Evaluation
A
B
This question was answered using A/B testing with low-fidelity prototypes of 2 different app layouts. The app layouts differed in that one allows a user to toggle different amenity icons on a map while the other has separate maps for each amenity.
Each round of user testing focused on each version of the design.
The goal of testing was to:
1. Understand which app design built was more intuitive and easy for a user to understand.
2. Gauge if students would find the app useful (ie. did the feedback from usability testing correlate with user research results).
1. Problem
"It can be hard to find where good bathrooms are, where microwaves are generally" ~ Sanjana S., UW 28'
"I always kind of struggle to find a microwave to heat up my lunch because there is not really good documentation on where they're located around campus." ~ Andrea C., UW 28'
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A survey of 35+ students further exposed this gap within the accessibility infrastructure at UW :
Students should not have to wander around not knowing where basic amenities are or face the quality of the amenities being subpar. However, this is a reality many students face on a daily basis. Accessibility to these amenities end up being based on luck and coincidence, leading to unequal access all over the UW campus.
: Students struggle with finding amenities on the UW campus.
: Many students waste extra time searching for amenities on UW campus.
: Many students struggle to find good quality and working microwaves, water refill stations, restrooms, and locations for menstrual products on UW campus.
: Existing apps and websites do not provide up-to-date information on the locations of microwaves, water refill stations, or menstrual products on UW campus. They also provide no indication on the quality of the amenities themselves (e.g. if a microwave is dirty or a water refill station is broken).
: A map app that shows students if a building has a microwave/water refill stations/menstrual products via an icon. When an icon for a given amenity is clicked on, it shows all locations with the building where that amenity is along with a rating (an average from the ratings of different students using the app) of the amenity itself. It also allows students to report a new amenity in a location or report an amenity as broken or missing if it has moved. An AI agent allows students in a time crunch to ask and be recommended the best rated amenities nearest to them.
