From Daydream to Daywalker

My thoughts on the prototyping process

As part of the Coursera Interaction Design Specialization, we were tasked with creating an app prototype based on a chosen brief. I chose the Time brief; redesign how people interact with time.

My immediate thought was about being able to interpret time as graphic instead of numeric. This is mostly because my brain sometimes switches numbers and takes just a little bit longer to interpret number-based data. Why not make it even easier to figure out something related to time.

My user need came from where I live. In Cape Town we have a rather famous mountain; Table Mountain. It’s one of the seven natural wonders of the world. So people like to walk around on it. Fairly often they get stuck on it. Sometimes this is because it gets dark before they thought it would. This doesn’t just happen on famous mountains though. Hiking, camping, or just running in a new location can sometimes catch you off guard when it comes to remaining daylight.

My app is named Daywalker because it takes your location or your chosen route and tells you when the sun will be going down. It can remind you when to turn back or make camp and it takes into account your elevation and surroundings.

The Design Process

I started with sketches and paper prototypes.

I created the logo without much thought early on, but ended up liking it enough to keep it.

Once I had the basic screens figured out, I uploaded them to InVision (a free prototype hosting site). Seeing how it would actually work on a phone influenced my design decisions considerably.

Using InVision in the wild for user feedback.

User feedback helped me see issues and consider design potential that hadn’t even occurred to me.

Some evolution of the Home screen design.

I hesitate to suggest this app is unique. In the process of developing it some people thought they had heard of apps that did something similar. I think I might be the first one to represent the light quality on the route that’s chosen or to estimate how long you have until sunset according to your pace paired with your selected destination.

Either way I’m pretty happy with what I’ve achieved and I think I’ve come away from the experience with some useful skills.