Interaction Design Process Blog
What I Did
During the studio, we brainstormed the aspects of a citizen science data collection mobile application for plant health in King County. I first helped ideate the science, some plant habitats in King County, and some plant health-related projects. Then, I ideated some potential citizen reports (the users). For example, one potential user of such an app that I brainstormed would be a gardener who is concerned with the soil quality of his plants. I joined a group afterwards to brainstorm numeric sensor data that could be collected in the app. After the studio, I decided that the user for my app would be gardeners who want to monitor the health of their plants. I chose this topic because I was very interested in gardening as a child, and my background in gardening would enable me to design a useful application for gardeners. It collects numeric sensor data on pH levels, and collects textual information on visual plant characteristics. I called it the “Grow It!” app, and I first drew an interaction flow diagram of the app. Next, I drew the sketches of the visual screens of the app on index cards. After uploading photos of these screens to the Marvel mobile app, I was able to link the screens together and produce a low-fidelity prototype.
Reflection on the Experience
I thoroughly enjoyed this project because I thought that this experience enabled me to engage more in the design process. Through the studio ideation, I participated in user-centered design by thinking about a group of users and what their potential problems were. I went deeper in the design process than last studio by acting upon the interaction flow diagrams and design sketches by producing a low-fidelity prototype of the app on Marvel. I enjoy drawing and visual design, and this part of the project was very meaningful to me.
Applications for the Future
I believe that the ability to engage in interaction design will be very important for me going into the future. Any mobile or web application would require the careful design consideration that interaction design provides by sketching the app screens. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I am a full stack intern for StayMarta, and although I mostly write code, I have to design the layout of the website. Drawing an interaction flow diagram and sketching the web application screens would be a great help in making sure that I have carefully consider how each webpage links with the next. I cannot think of a web or mobile application that would not be fit for this process, primarily because each screen links to the next in an interaction flow. Thus, this interaction design process would be useful in any web/mobile project.
