What a list
An idea that became prototype.
Everything started 9 months ago, when I began the Coursera Interaction Design specialization of San Diego University together with two colleagues of mine. Why? I work as a product owner for an important italian publisher and I wanted to learn techniques to discover needs and to understand how to transform these needs into a prototype that real users can test. The specialization is organized in 8 courses: the first seven courses teach what you be applied in the last one: the Capstone. Let’s see the main steps of this one.
The mission
The mission was “redesign the way we experience or interact with time”. When I read this description a very inspirational Ted talk of Laura Vanderkam about time management came to my mind. She reflects on how much time we spend saying that we have no time, even if we always have enough time to manage emergency. What if we start reasoning more on our schedule? Can we create goals and save time in our weekly schedule to realize them?
Needfinding
I observed and interviewed three workers between 30 and 40 years old, with lots of responsabilities in their jobs. They use online calendars, but they track their activities with analog tools (i.e. paper books or post-it notes): they are faster and easier to manage. This doesn’t allow them to see their tasks at a glance, to manage priorities or to keep everything under control. They have an issue to manage their time at work to be sure they don’t forget anything.
Ideation
Talking with people helped me analyze breakdowns and generate opportunities, but first I had to make sure that in the digital world something similar was already present, in order to get some inspiration. Each tool can be inspirational to better focus on your idea. Each design is re-design. So I looked around many apps to inspire me.
Storyboard
I started sketching one of my idea to focus on user needs: Francesca has an urgent task to do and she reflects on the time she needs to complete it.
I can’t draw very well, but storyboarding made me understand if this was a real and reasonable need.
Prototype
Thanks to the storyboard I figured out the context of my app. Then, I could sketch the first prototypes with the very basic elements of What a list.
I created the prototypes in more or less 30 minutes, then I started reasoning on the main functionalities and on the flow of my app: this helped to find problems and to keep everything simple.
In my application, the user can organize the task in lists (i.e. work, shopping). The task can have a due date and/or a duration: How many hours do you need to create a presentation? The users insert the duration and the app suggests them when they can work on it.
Heuristic Evaluation
Having storyboard and prototypes let you communicate in a concrete way an idea. So, I started testing.
I recorded friends and colleagues using my prototype so that I could understand the main issues and pain points. Then I had an online session with a colleague from the course (Gabriela, she was in Brasil); she evaluated my prototypes with Nielsen’s heuristic and I evaluated hers.
This was incredible. Gabriela in her heuristics pointed out all the problems that also the non-expert testers underlined.
This was the first time I had listened feedbacks about my work. I felt the instinct to defend my job and my rough prototypes, but then I really thanked all these users because their analysis helped me understand how to work in the next sessions.
A plan and a skeleton
The next step was creating the interactive prototype. It was a very huge and intense work. First of all, I detailed a plan with all the steps I was supposed to do and in the following weeks I constantly kept it updated it to keep everything under control.
I decided to create my prototype with proto.io, this web tool helps you create interactive prototypes, ready to test. Day by day, What a list was growing and the prototype got ready to be tested.
Test the prototype
I asked some colleagues a date to test my prototype. I defined the scenario and the tasks they had to do, to be sure that they used all the functionalities of the apps. I asked them to think aloud, so that I could understand the pain points and the issues of What a list.
The testers liked a lot the idea of the app, but the flow was not so clear and simple to understand. I discovered some wrong labels and two main issues to change. Watching them I understood how reasonable their suggestions were.
Before starting with the redesign, I wanted to investigate a specific doubt with an A|B test.
A|B test
The focus of What a list is to help users to create a plan to manage their schedule. The plan looks like a calendar, clicking the edit button the user can drag and drop the events to organize his/her week. My doubts was: does the user really need an edit button or is it clear that the events are draggable?
I’ve named my first prototype as test A and I’ve created test B without the edit button. Then, I run an A|B test in usertesting.
It was incredible! In more or less 20 minutes four users from all over the world answered to my doubt. Two of them tested the solution A and the others solution B. I understood that an edit button let them think that there is much more that they can change. So, B is a better solution.
They totally confirmed all the changes the previous testers suggested me so.. Here’s my prototype: https://pr.to/YFRCBD/ .
Show and tell
Last, but not least I created a video to explain my app What a list.
What a list: the app that helps you to organize your schedule.
If you want to live a great experience:
Interaction Design — University of California, San Diego.
Happy designing!