30 minutes to HIFI, day 1
I tell people that my favorite part about UX is taking a complex task and making it simple again, but really, my favorite part about UX is probably the design challenges. That being said, I’ve decided to do a 30-minute to HIFI design challenge every day. Here are the rules:
The Rules:
- I use designercize.com to come up with the challenge prompt.
- I’m not allowed to skip a design challenge. I have to do the first one I’m prompted with.
- Once the clock starts, I have thirty minutes to come up with the HIFI.
The Challenge:
I started off with a design challenge generator. The challenge I was given was to come up with a habit tracking app to help single parents.
The Process:
Before I started, I tried to break down the problem into its simplest points. I thought: “This is a habit tracking app specifically for single parents. What challenges do single parents have that couples don’t have to deal with? I came up with a few simple concepts:
- Single parents don’t typically have the same amount of income as traditional 2 parent families.
- Single parents don’t have as much time as a 2 parent family would
Next, since I only had 30 minutes for the whole process, I decided to make a snap decision and focus on the issue of time that single parents struggle with, because I felt like that related to the habits of a single parent more, although an app focusing on spending habits would also have probably been a great application. This one was a toss up, but since we were short on time, I decided to focus on the, well, time (the irony.)
With this in mind, I created a hypothesis statement: How might we help a single parent spend more time with their kids through our app?
I started by trying to figure out how much time a single parent has to spend with their kids. Everybody has 24 hours in their day. I then figured there were some constants for time that a person would face in their day to day, and calculated that.
The average person sleeps (ideally) for 8 hours a day. That leaves us with 16 hours.
The average person showers and gets dressed. That leaves us with 15 hours.
The average person works for 8 hours a day, and has an hour lunch break. That brings us down to 6 hours.
The average person spends about an hour commuting to work, and another commuting back. That brings us down to 4 hours.
This means that time is incredibly crucial. That means that in those 4 hours, the parent has to get all of their errands, tv watching, cooking, socializing, and spending time with their kids in. I figured that what. Parent does that takes time away from their kids is different from their day to day, but the aspect of time remains the same. Articulated, this sounds like alot of information. Really, my paper looked like this:
The Solution:
Finally, the solution I came up with is simple: You put in how much time you’re allowed to spend on extracurricular activities in a day. Every time you start the activity, you start the timer, and every time you pause, you would also pause the timer. Really, I came up with a glorified timer. I don’t think there’s a need for an app, but since this is 30 minutes to hifi, I decided to design one anyways.
The UI:
Because I wouldn’t have enough time to make any of the elements beautiful, I opted for a gradient background (so it wouldn’t look so blah.) and a purple color because I feel like purple is soothing. I didn’t have enough time to do research, but from past experiences, I figured this was pretty spot on. I decided on a cyclical timer with a slider. That way, if a parent finished reading or something and forgets to pause the timer, they can easily turn it back instead of having to start over or put the time in somewhere else. Finally, I created a settings tab where I figured there would be an about page explaining how to use the timer, and that sort of stuff. Here are both the LOFIs and the HIFI solution:
The Final Solution:
Takeaways:
30 minutes is a super short amount of time. Also, I wasted 2 minutes trying put on a shirt. (yep. 2 minutes.) ALSO also, I didn’t use a mouse which normally isn’t an issue, but when you’re crunched for time, every second matters. Next time, I’ll be more prepared.
