I’m involved in Greek life here on campus. We’re in a pandemic. So, what do you do when recruitment comes along?
When you think of sorority recruitment, I’m guessing the first thing that comes to mind is the cheering, hugging, and talking that happens for all hours of the day, each day of the weekend. While this is (kind of) true for the most part, it definitely is not the case this year. To accommodate the circumstances, we figured it would be completely virtual. First thought? Zoom of course. The app that has gotten us through it all. To our surprise, they chose…
It’s like Sims, but not? You have an avatar and walk around this virtual “campus”. You can go into auditoriums, classrooms, breakout rooms, and even drive a boat (see above photo for reference). It was all fun and games learning how to do it during practice sessions, but then the big day of round 1 came.
In this week’s discussion, we talked all about interface and user experience. You could definitely say my experience with Degy was subpar. Trying to get over 2500 college students to figure out a web application that’s very game-like doesn’t sound like it should be a huge challenge, right? Wrong. We immediately ran into complications with audio, video, internet connection, and just overall instructions. No one could hear each other, we couldn’t figure out how to change between rooms seamlessly, and a lot of people couldn’t even enter this “virtual world” without getting suspended from the application.
This immediately made everyone’s expectations and patience plummet. Not very good for business. After about half an hour of making it work, what was the backup plan?
This all brings me back to UX. Zoom is the staple of all communications during this pandemic for very good reasons. It’s dependable, user-friendly, and familiar. Even my grandma was able to figure out how to use it within a day, and she hates technology! Anyways, now we’re using zoom for the rest of recruitment, just like how it should’ve been in the first place. It’s so much less stressful and made it so much easier. You know what they say…