Harvard School of Engineering
2025
Designing Harvard's tour-booking platform
Creating a 3-step web-based product subscription platform to support Kleenex product growth
Overview
Personalized Harvard experiences, in visitors' culture
To help retired international visitors overcome language barriers and form meaningful connections with Harvard culture, my team designed Crimson Guide Connect ↗.
Crimson Guide Connect is a web-first booking platform matching international retirees with Harvard student guides who share their language, culture, and hobbies. This transforms language barriers into personalized, genuine campus connections between tourists and the students who embody the Harvard experience.
My Contribution
Conducted 3/10 in-person interviews with elderly tourists, use results from hypothesis testing to synthesizing user pain points.
Prototyped initial product wireframe and ran user testing with 6 stakeholders.
Designed final 5-minute demo pitch deck, presented in front of Harvard faculty and peers.
Problem
Supporting growing organizations
Of Harvard's 8M annual visitors, 240K are retired elders from countries outside of the US, many of which are non English-speaking countries.
To understand potential pain points of these international retirees, my team conducted secondary research ↗ and summarized 3 problems:
Source: the Harvard Crimson, "Tourists in the Yard" (2025)
This led to our initial assumption that retired international visitors cannot fully access the Harvard experience due to language barriers, which means we should build a solution that offers better translation and more tour options on a minimalist interface. However…
Updated insight & validation
After we interviewed 10 retired international tourists in Harvard Yard, our first hypothesis was quickly tabled.
Their stories revealed that, while the 3 pain points remain true, our target users don’t need another translation app. Instead, their strongest design is to develope authentic, meaningful connections with Harvard’s students and culture, which official tours fail to provide.
Method: field research in Harvard Yard. We spoke languages we knew (Mandarin, French, German, Vietnamese), or used Google Translate to communicate.
"I wish I could vividly feel what it's like to live and study at Harvard, and not just tell me when thing were built and what they're for."
Marianne
French tourist, 67 years old
My parents don't speak English at all, but Harvard's official tours are English-only, so I didn't book a tour because it can't help them learn or feel involved.
Sunny
Korean tourist, with 70+ yo parents
These responses reshaped our approach to considering how we can offer customizable, relatable Harvard experiences for tourists while making sure they understand without language barrier.
Two-sided marketplace validation
The solution that could solve the pain point of a detached experience is to involve people who know Harvard the best: students. Interviewing 6 Harvard students and 6 new international tourist groups helped us validated demand on both sides, confirming two-sided marketplace viability.
Method: second round of in-person field research in Harvard Yard.
Solution
Reflection
Uncover the “why,” not just the “what”
Our initial assumption about our users’ needs was challenged, proving that design must begin with data-supported research.
Foster human connection, not replace it
AI usage should be case-specific. We leveraged human elements for genuine connection rather than relying on AI, which is powerful but doesn’t give the human connection users ask for.
Optimize usability, not sacrifice function
We strategically combined design concepts for efficiency and clarity in the final workflow.
Decision
Problem 1: Choosing Solution Approach — Marketplace vs. AI
Method: rapid prototyping 4 distinct solutions, then finalizing top 2 impactful designs
Decision: Combine the strengths of A and B
Final wireframe
Problem 2: Booking Flow — Guide-First vs. Date-First
Our first wireframe lets users “select guide” first for highest profile compatibility. But users were confused by unavailable dates.
Decision: Select visit time first, then student guide
After iterating based on user testing results, users select visit time first, then guides. Testing this alongside our previous design, 8/10 users completed booking action.
