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Coulter Welcome Center Multilingual Tour Guide

PROJECT OVERVIEW
Create a campus tour guide that is both multilingual & multimodal to transform the linguistic landscape of our institution and cultivate senses of belonging.
TIMELINE
20 weeks, 2024 (Ongoing...)
ROLE          
Design Lead & Researcher
CREDITS    
Team—Huarui Lai, Michelle Jia, Sijia Fan, Scarlette Mo
As the design lead within the commissioned team, I created a maintainable solution for the Office of Enrollment management and Dean of Admissions to use and scale for their multilingual visitors.
The Coulter Welcome Center is where all visitors can learn more about Carnegie Mellon University through tours, interactive maps, and other marketing material.
PROBLEM SPACE
Students will receive a hindered experience when expected to be a translator by default:
Translating requires a lot of focus and effort to code-switch and properly convey intended meaning. Without full engagement during the tour, information gets lost in translation for both the student and the parent.
To be concerned for their children's education but unable to receive answers to their own question can be frustrating.
Most posters, signs, and print media around campus are exclusively in English, but look at the statistics of our student body...(see graphs below from the CMU's data report)
After talking with our client in the Modern Languages Department, student tour guides and admissions directors, we learned that...
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Dependency can be vulnerable for parents:
Multilingual resources barely exist at CMU:
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RESEARCH
Survey:
Through a wide distribution among international student associations, 72 students respondents were asked about their demographic, personal experiences, and preferences regarding multilingual tools.
Observational Study:
To better understand how the current CMU campus tour works, as well as the visitors’ main focuses, we broken into teams and attended 2 campus tours.
Affinity Diagramming:
To synthesize our findings, find common patterns and pain points to help us generate potential ideas for our solution.
Direct Interviews:
We conducted interviews with...

8 students whose survey responses stood out, to gain a deeper understanding of their experiences.

3 CMU faculty members and parents to gain insight into their perceptions of CMU's cultural landscape.

4 Tartan Ambassadors and college-specific tour guides to understand the potential challenges when giving a campus tour.  

Associate Director of Visitor Experience and Campus Tours to better define our problem scope and align our project with CMU standards.
Competitive Analysis:
We compared 11 existing multilingual tours utilized by various universities and museums. Our objective was to evaluate the range of languages offered in the tour guides, the modes of presentation utilized, and the interaction type.
INSIGHTS
Through above, we concluded...
“There’s still a lot of ignorance about what it means to be here, speaking several languages.”

“I feel embarrassed and frustrated when I can’t properly convey the meaning of a translation for my parents.”

“The Tartan Ambassadors are encouraged to talk about their own stories, but the amount of such is limited due to the fixed schedule and script.”
Parents were interested when student tour guides brought in their personal experiences and stories about student life.
INSIGHT 3:
INSIGHT 4:
The lack of multilingual resources on campus has caused some students and faculty to feel a sense of “othering.”
INSIGHT 2:
Auditory communication is just as important because visitors want to be able to look around while walking along.
Both students and parents feel frustration when the student can not encapsulate the intended meaning.
INSIGHT 1:
IDEATION
Weighing our abilities with our stakeholder's needs and wants...
We created 3 different prototypes to test out our intended user flow.
OVERVIEW
REFLECTIONS
On going...
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