Journey to UX: Project One

User Research

Create a solution? No worries. But I should probably figure out what the problem is first.

So after asking my partner or, for this project, user sample size of one, this was what the overall theme of the issue was:

Kristin wants to know about local places/events where she can hang out

Ok. Simple enough. But that’s a pretty broad idea and everyone is different, so what does K specifically (her name is Kristin but for the entry we’ll just call her “K” for convenience) need in this app?

To figure that out I needed to know about the issues that K currently faces when trying to achieve her goal of finding events and why she does it the way she does.

Which brought me to User Interviews.

It was basically me asking K a series of questions in order to get to know how she usually ended up getting to her objective and whether or not creating this application solution is something that K will regularly use.

After I had prepared my list of questions:

• What constitutes to you as a good “hang out”
• What are some parameters/conditions do you take into account when determining to go somewhere?
• Tell me about a good experience attending an event
• Tell me about a bad experience attending an event
• Have you ever chanced upon some place that you did not previously know about?

So began my interview with K,

and I jotted down my observations. Of course.

• K is new to Melbourne from NYC so she doesn’t know the city and therefore is eager to find out about the places to be.
• She doesn’t want to go to touristy* places and therefore wants to know where locals would ordinarily be.
• There are multiple variables that K takes into account when pondering about whether or not to go somewhere, such as distance (she doesn’t drive), pricing, volume of people, time of day.

*Touristy — A word invented by New Yorkers to describe somewhere that tourists would usually go???

**Kristin please don’t hurt me

Storyboarding

Because I can.

So now that I understand where K is coming from and the issues, that she faces when trying to achieve an outcome, in depth I can now construct scenarios that will be used later in the project in user flows and then the wireframes through the addition of…

Empathy. Because people > machines. Except in Terminator.

These are all scenarios to try better understand the journey to their problem and then the solution, utilising the application that has the necessary functions to enable them to do so.

User Flows

Woo I can finally get to wireframing, my favourite part of the…

What is this?

Oh yeah, I should probably do a user flow to make sure that the thought process in which K goes through my mobile application reaches a conclusion that she can be happy with.

I made this simple user flow, it is adaptable to the storyboard scenarios that can be inserted before “pick an option” as both scenarios are dependent on the decisions that K makes after the options.

After determining that were no problems that the user can encounter whilst going through the process, I began wireframing.

Wireframing and Iterations

Finally. Yes.

Time to start doodling. Doodling with a direction of course, utilising the information that I gathered from the User Research along with the Storyboarding and User Flows.

Here are the initial sketches of the app, it’s not much, but I tried.

Below are the same pages as above however with some alterations and drawn using a ruler. They were time consuming but helped when it came to changing the interface in successive iterations.

1. Main map that the user first sees when entering the app (after loading).
2. The same page and contents as #1 however in list view.
3. Event description with updates and comments
4. Search function
5. Weather page that shows current and future weather with relevant tips.
6. Menu

The idea for the map came about when K said that she didn’t drive and that made me think that due to having to walk or take the terrible public transport, it might be important to show the distance from her current location.

Some issues with this first design however were pointed out during the first feedback/testing with K which most of important of which was:

• Not being able to tell what to do once entering the application and landing on page #1.

The inclusion of a preferences pop-up during the user’s first entry upon the application, which would enforce the theme of the application, which was to help the user find relevant events to their interests.

After this two step process, the user would then enter the main map page as before, however this time the user would automatically be shown a pop-up for an event that was nearest to them that had tags relevant to what they chose in the previous step.

See below.

Feedback Round #2

Issues

• Unconventional icons for the switch between map mode and list mode
• Hard to understand, messy content on the event description page

These issues were found to be relatively easy to fix, first of all the icons were of my own design, not being from a visual background I didn’t realise that there were conventions to follow.

No problem, going to https://thenounproject.com/ I sought inspiration for similar design ideas for the buttons that would make them more understandable to more people.

The event description was cleaned up.