Tech Club in Your Pocket:
Designing Engaging NFC Cards for CISSA

Tech Society Hardware

CHALLENGE

  • The process for members to sign up was a lengthy process

  • The club required a consistent form of verification at every event

  • The product had a strict budget and timeline

OPPORTUNITY

To create a physical and novel product (NFC membership card) that is accompanied with a First Year Guide (FYG) webpage that encourages students to become CISSA members as well as improve their student experience through the FYG.

TIMELINE

4th Dec 2023 - 14th Jan 2024

MY ROLE

Product Designer, Product Manager

RESPONSIBILITIES

Product Management

UI/UX Design

NFC Technology

User Engagement

Client

CISSA’s (Computing & Information Systems Students Association) is the largest student tech club in Melbourne. They focus on connecting the students of the University of Melbourne with industry professionals, academics and students (in Computers Science, Data Science, Product Design) alike.

Events such as social gathering, industry nights and panels, workshops and hackathons are some of the ways CISSA give back to the community. They had over 2000 members in 2023; to maintain and exceed that level of membership, they were in need of a novelty item that would stand out among the other tech clubs. Therefore the need of the NFC membership cards were designed.

Challenges

Member onboarding was a lengthy process

The process required 5 steps across 3 different platforms:

  1. Instagram

  2. Link in bio

  3. Linktree

  4. UMSU website

  5. Sign up

The club required a consistent form of verification at every event

Event participants have to be members of the club, but the current verification process lies in the email inboxes of students. This requires them to dig through their busy inboxes for a weekly newsletter.

Wanted to stand out amongst other clubs

The product has to be something that other clubs don’t have that make them choose CISSA.

Solution

Use NFC technology to reduce the number of touchpoints to sign up

This allows the product to be both digital and physical creating something novel, innovative and useful. It reduces it to 3 touch points:

  1. Tapping the card

  2. CISSA website

  3. UMSU signup page

Physical membership card

With the NFC technology, it allows members to have an easy way to show their membership, while keeping up to date with any events whenever they want. This combination of hardware and software definitely stands out compared to other clubs.

To create an eye catching design that attracts new members

By using consistent branding of CISSA while including the annual theme of pixel art.

The 3 initial concepts for the cards

Ideation

The visual designs of the cards were very important as it is what attracts potential members in the first place. The concepts revolved around the club’s theme of the year (pixel art), cityscape to resemble the city of Melbourne, and students because that is the demographic of the members.

Desktop version of the First Year Guide

The buildings you see above are carefully chosen to resemble iconic buildings from the University of Melbourne, such as the Arts West, Alan Gilbert, Student Pavilion, and Melbourne Connect building. As for the other two, these were to honour the club’s Diamond sponsors (highest tier) such as Jane Street and ANZ.

This design choice creates a sense of consistency and relevance between the students and where they are in. As for the sponsors, they will definitely get more attention to students who never knew them before, increasing the likelihood of getting the club more Diamond Sponsors.

Final Designs

Choosing iconic buildings around the University of Melbourne would lead to attracting more members as it was something relatable to them hence they would want to be connected/involved in the club. Moreover, the First Year Guide buildings were chosen to assist in showcasing the major sponsors of the club such as Jane St and ANZ. Their buildings were designed in pixel art alongside the University buildings to give a more packaged look with the club and sponsors.

The statistics of the NFC Membership card usage in the first two weeks of University

Student POV use case

Admin POV use case

Final designs of the physical NFC membership card

Future Steps

As a reflection to what went well during this project were:

  • Collaborating as a team smoothly and efficiently via comments and discussions

  • Managed to complete the design of both the card and webpage within a short time frame

  • The membership cards were very popular item during Orientation week which led to other clubs and students enquiring about the creation of the card and webpage.

For future considerations on how to improve the design process of the team, would be to begin the design process earlier. This led to a rushed order for the production of the membership cards. Therefore samples weren’t available at the time for the design team to revise and improved on the sample.

Credits

CISSA Product Team

Sean Khoo

Lucy Martin

Gunjan

Liza Orlovskaya

CISSA IT Team

Kailai Dong

Khang Luong

Eden Xu

Harrison Langdon

Michael Ren