Washington Hyperloop
Visual Design & Content Strategy
Sustainable Transportation
Background
Washington Hyperloop is an engineering club which has participated in the annual SpaceX Hyperloop competition for 5 years. A Hyperloop is a sealed, low pressure tube where pods can travel unimpeded by friction, allowing speeds comparable to an airplane for a fraction of the energy cost.
Due to limitations in tunneling technology, the Hyperloop competition was cancelled in 2021 during COVID with the Not-a-Boring competition replacing it in 2023. This new competition challenges university teams in building a Tunnel Boring Machine capable of:
- Autonomously drilling through the ground
- Recycling underground materials
- Building structural support for the tunnel.
Problem
Our team planned to participate in the 2024 Not-a-Boring Competition. Many of our members graduated and recruitment was paused during the delay between competitions, causing our membership to drop. My task was to design and implement a website in Webflow targetting two key user groups:
- Prospective members interested in joining our engineering or business sub teams.
- Industry sponsors to fund the cost building a TBM.
Existing Work
After responding to the initial message from the chatbot, it will ask questions to further define the goal and use this information for a card.
Because of our teams past work for the Hyperloop Competition some brand assets already existed from. To build on this legacy, I made sure to leverage the past logoand dark purple colors when creating my style guide.
I also conducted a competitive analysis on 20 other Hyperloop teams that have a website. Majority of these websites had a lackluster visual design, but this was still useful for thinking about content organization.
Branding Guidelines
The Solution
After responding to the initial message from the chatbot, it will ask questions to further define the goal and use this information for a card.
The new Hyperloop website clearly articulates how wedifferentiate ourself from other engineering clubs on campus
My job as a designer was to effectively leverage content to create a website that resonates withengineering students that Hyperloop is the club for them — including first year students who areseeking mentorship, seniors wanting to gain experience for post graduation, and anyone in between
The Results:
During the 22-23 school year, only 12 students applied to join Hyperloop. A month after the nextschool year started, over 30 students applied. While we advertise our recruiting process in several ways, a website is by far the most accessible and available.
Centralizing information for our club
Aligning the UX Strategy for prospective recruits and industry sponsors was critical to this project.
During my discovery process I outline club differentiators that should be emphasized on the homepage:
- Mentorship for inexperienced students
- ︎Working with advanced technologies
- World wide renown for our achievements in pod technology
These 3 differentiators took the form of imagery, the timeline component, and links to related pages.
Streamlining the flow for our two user groups
The links to the rest of the pages on the website were all available on the front page:
- Not-a-Boring Competition
- Hyperloop Competition
- Team Information
- Current Sponsers
How Our Team is Organized
Evoking student’s interest about our work.
During my discovery process I interviewed each sub-team lead to learn about how their team contributes to building our Tunnel Boring Machine. Understanding thisallowed me to focus content on:
- Technical requirements our Tunnel Boring Machine needed to achieve for the competition.
- Imagery to help conceptualize what a Tunnel Boring Machine is.
- Iconography for each sub team
- Hovering on a sub team card displayed limited information before users click to learn more
- Benefits tunneling technology can provide for society
If the chat progresses is halted like in the previous pain point, GPT-3 is capable of providing suggestions to the user but we found these to be out of context.
P3 tried to make a goal of “getting above average on an upcoming exam”, and one suggestion was to save time by studying with audiobooks. The chatbot doesn’t know the exam is for pharmacology, which P3 told us requires heavy memorization and audio books wouldn’t be very helpful.
The chatbot can ask more than one question in a single message. It was unclear for our participants if these should be answered in multiple responses or just one.
In general, the chatbot could send very long messages making it a slog to read through.
Telling Washington Hyperloop’s Story
- Explaining what exactly Hyperloop transist is.
- Discussing the societal benefits of Hyperloop transit.
- Showing off some of our photos from previous competitions.
If the chat progresses is halted like in the previous pain point, GPT-3 is capable of providing suggestions to the user but we found these to be out of context.
P3 tried to make a goal of “getting above average on an upcoming exam”, and one suggestion was to save time by studying with audiobooks. The chatbot doesn’t know the exam is for pharmacology, which P3 told us requires heavy memorization and audio books wouldn’t be very helpful.
The chatbot can ask more than one question in a single message. It was unclear for our participants if these should be answered in multiple responses or just one.
In general, the chatbot could send very long messages making it a slog to read through.
Emphasizing our Team’s Unique Culture
Encouraging students Washington Hyperloop is the right place for them.
This was achieved by elaborating on the following:
- Highlighting the peer networking opportunities that can be made in our club.
- A team roster containing each members LinkedIn for students to learn what ways Hyperloop could advance their career.
- Iconography for each of our brand attributes.
If the chat progresses is halted like in the previous pain point, GPT-3 is capable of providing suggestions to the user but we found these to be out of context.
P3 tried to make a goal of “getting above average on an upcoming exam”, and one suggestion was to save time by studying with audiobooks. The chatbot doesn’t know the exam is for pharmacology, which P3 told us requires heavy memorization and audio books wouldn’t be very helpful.
The chatbot can ask more than one question in a single message. It was unclear for our participants if these should be answered in multiple responses or just one.
In general, the chatbot could send very long messages making it a slog to read through.
Appreciating our Sponsers
Designing and engineering products for competitions is incredibly expensive and requires industry sponsorship. Thanking our current sponsors and catching prospective sponsors attention was done by mentioning:
- Our team has lasted 7 years, a feat few other clubs on campus have.
- Gaining brand exposure due to our international recognition from previous competitions.
- Philanthropic nature of investing in local education.
If the chat progresses is halted like in the previous pain point, GPT-3 is capable of providing suggestions to the user but we found these to be out of context.
P3 tried to make a goal of “getting above average on an upcoming exam”, and one suggestion was to save time by studying with audiobooks. The chatbot doesn’t know the exam is for pharmacology, which P3 told us requires heavy memorization and audio books wouldn’t be very helpful.
The chatbot can ask more than one question in a single message. It was unclear for our participants if these should be answered in multiple responses or just one.
In general, the chatbot could send very long messages making it a slog to read through.
