LunchNow: A true UX story complete. An upcoming UX journey to begin.
A Coursera Interaction Design Capstone Project
Have you ever felt that a moment in time appears when you realise that this is what you’re made of? That this is how you think? That this is the right way how things should be done? This moment appeared to me about a year ago. I have never heard of UX. I had just finished my studies in Architecture, but I have always had a different approach to some things, at least in my mind. Some things are not clear always inside you. You don’t know if you’re doing something in a different way and what that might be. You just need a push in order to realise it. The push came the first time I read about UX. What it is, how it is applied, what principles it follows. That moment was mind widening. A moment of deep realisation.
That day I set a goal that I believed it would be hard to pursue. After a lot of reading, I came to realise how fresh and evolving this “job description” is and how sometimes misinterpreted it gets by other professions that are either close or far from it. Anyway, from the very first moment I had a strong feeling about this and I plunged into the abundunce of knowledge that always awaits in the next cybernetic corner. I have to admit though. Reading wasn’t enough and I am a man of practice. I really feel that I need to get my hands dirty, especially with something that I need to understand.
Here comes Coursera, San Diego University and their Interaction Design Specialization. I was sceptical at first. I hadn’t heard anything about it before and online forums about online classes can be hit or miss. After consulting with a couple of trustworthy friends, I decided to enroll. My main reason why I decided to go with this one? Well, this stream of courses had every week exercises with kind of strict deadlines (which eventually would become my “doom”) and on top of that I would have the chance to see what other people where doing the same time with me. It saw it begun, and… boom… 6 months later, happening on the same time while working and taking a toll on my free time, I reach the capstone project. The opportunity to use all the knowledge and ideas in a constructive, creative and why not, experimental way. Here is what happened…
How ideas are born
It was in August when I enrolled on this Specialization and during that time, I was working on a job that its main characteristic was being on the road all the time, around the city and its outskirts. This kind of going around, with a really flexible schedule that was changing all the time according to what new situation occurs, lead me and my colleagues into a problem. Especially for a few of us that it was a serious issue. I realised that quite often I was skipping my lunch with various implications to the rest of the day and eventually my health. After discussing it with some of my colleagues we decided that we should do something about it. A month or so later came the Capstone Project and… bingo!
I had my eyes fixed on the design brief that interested me — Change.
Needfinding
What was really needed this time was to find what exactly would guide the rest of my thoughts, actions and designs. I contacted friends and guys that work on similar and different environments than my job and tested their everyday actions as much as possible, always observing how they manage their lunch.
My main note from all the discussions and observations is this:
Noone wants to skip his lunch. Quantities may vary, time may differ, preferences, too, but lunch is important for everyone’s everyday life.
Another important aspect that arose during these sessions with the selected users was that job alone was not the only culprit in the issue of skipping lunch. Routine was a thing that everyone had to face and overcome everyday. Routine lead people lose their appetite because of having to be creative regarding their everyday choices so many times during the day, hence they eventually skip meals.
Through these sessions I discovered what the two pillars of my idea and design would be. The app had already started to take its form (at least in my mind).
The point of view that I formed was a little bit funny, but in my eyes to the point., I needed the part of need and the part of this procedure being something that makes you happy:
“I love my job, but I hate getting hungry, because that makes me angry.”
Storyboards, Prototypes, All the Fun!
Now it was the time of exploration. The time where I had to transform the ideas into concrete directions of design. What would be a better way to do this rather than create a use scenario? Some storyboards were created and this is where all the fun began!
Next step? Paper protypes! As I mentioned in the beginning of this story, I really am a man of practice and this was really enjoyable. Now the time had come for real idea conversion into design. First thoughts started to get sketched on paper. From rough to more defined.
Fixing errors and testing
Heuristic evaluation was another fun procedure. The main problem that you have to face is the critique. The designer is the one responsible and ready to get any negative or positive impact. So, after this you have to keep your mind open, your egoism reduced and accept that you are capable of making mistakes. That’s the first step of accepting the results of a heuristic evaluation and generally, of any testing that will bring up critique to your work.
Having sorted the results of heuristic evaluation by gravity, type and difficulty to fix, a new challenge was to make a plan predicting what is going to be done in the last upcoming weeks. During these procedures, the design was growing and getting more refined while on the same time bugs and problems were getting fixed.
Interactive Prototype/UserTesting/Finalizing
The time to see how the set of static screens that was produced during the past weeks interacted with each other was upon us. With fear in my heart but also a good feeling that I had done all the right steps so far I uploaded everything to invisionapp.com. The results were really interesting letting me do some more testing and have an overview of a quite accurate experience of the app.
At this point a new platform that I’ve never tested before came up. Usertesting.com and its features where available to us for a brief A/B testing. That meant that real users who didn’t have anything to do with our project would see the results of our design. Since we had only 2 users per design, I shouldn’t test something complicated that would need much more users in order to derive some good conclusions, so some opinions on the wording of a certain call-to-action would be the perfect solution for a problem that was buzzing my mind.
That was one of the most interesting procedures during the entire capstone! Some really nice points were made and new issues (and compliments, don’t forget that) came up that could help the design even further.
And now it’s time for a beer…
This whole procedure was really mind bending at some points. Trying to catch up with real life, work and deadlines, was a little bit over the top sometimes, but the important part is to know why you’re doing it. In my case, I have believed since the beginning that it would be something intriguing, something that would actually make me get my hands dirty on UX and, indeed, it has really rewarded me. All these courses have given me knowledge that I will make use of in my work and why not, in my everyday life.
I would really like to thank everyone for their efforts in setting up the class, for being part of it and keeping it alive as a welcome community.
So, what next? I don’t know. I just have one goal right now: get a job as a UXer. Eeeerr… I mean… Get a beer… Then get a job as a UXer.
Cheers!
P.S. There is a video, too.
