Navigating The World of Rapid Prototyping: A Retrospective

Garrett Holmes
Nov 3 · 9 min read

On the first day of my professional career, my boss shared the simple philosophy that the best way to learn is to get thrown into the fire. And that’s exactly what he did. My initial reaction was that of hesitation, followed shortly by hours of nothing but me feeling completely lost. I went home that night, feeling like a complete failure, and pondered long and hard about this analogy of being thrown into the fire. I knew that the only way I was going to make it, was to embrace the challenge.

And boy, I’m glad that I did.

Looking back on my first project as a UX Designer, I had flashbacks to that fateful first day, reliving feelings of my old dreaded friend, imposter syndrome. But much like before, the only way forward is to embrace the challenge.

And boy, I’m glad that I did.

My first challenge as a UX designer was simple:

Working in pairs, identify an everyday problem that your partner experiences. After identifying and understanding said problem, design a rough interactive paper prototype that addresses the problem you identified.

In other words, create a rapid prototype for a product that solves a problem unique to a complete stranger.

I embraced the challenge head on and got to work, creating a product now known as:

SIDEFLICK, “Your Movie Sidekick”

More on this later.


As with any good UX design process, my first foray into the world of rapid prototyping began with a user interview. With such a broad project brief, and the option of conducting interviews with only one individual (a complete stranger at that), my first goal was to spend time learning as much as I could about my target user. In this case, that user was Phill.

An interview with Phillip Abraham (right)

Through a series of 25 questions (full list here) I was able to uncover a lot about who Phill is, what challenges he faces on a daily basis, and even what motivates him in life. We talked about his career as a documentary filmmaker, his new daily daily schedule, and the things that bring him the most enjoyment in life.

After what I thought was a great interview, I began the process of affinity mapping all of the responses that I gathered from Phill. It was at this point, I knew that I had made a mistake. I had gathered a lot of great information about who Phill was, but I quickly realized that I had kept my questions too broad. I failed to dive deeper into Phill’s responses, so that I could find a real problem for him that I would be able to solve.

Cue the realization that user interview are much harder than they look.

Luckily, I had the ability to conduct an additional interview with Phill. This was something that I did not take for granted, knowing that I will not typically have the opportunity to sit down with a user multiple times. With this second interview I was able to dive into three areas of Phill’s life that I had learned only a sliver about in the first interview: his filmmaking, his new motorcycle, and his love for cooking.

Diving into these three areas, it was clear to me that filmmaking was the part of Phill’s life that he was most eager to talk about, leading me down the path to discover the problem that I would soon be finding a solution for.

Through this interview and another round of affinity mapping here’s what I learned:

  • Uses film for learning and inspiration
  • Wishes he watched more movies
  • Has a subscription to a variety of streaming platforms
  • Feels these streaming platforms give lackluster recommendations
  • There are too many movie titles to sift through
  • Streaming platforms don’t always have trailers
  • Loves all genres of film

All of this information led me to a user persona that looks like this:

Phill with one of his many cameras

Phillip Abraham is a passionate filmmaker who has always loved the art of film. He leads a very busy life leaving few unoccupied hours in his day. Due to his busy lifestyle, Phill is always finding ways to make efficient use of his time. As a filmmaker, Phill loves to watch movies as much as he can. But due to the busy lifestlye that he leads, he is not able to watch as many movies as he would like.

Building a persona for Phill and knowing that Phill subscribes to several streaming platforms and that he finds the process of finding a movie to watch on these platforms lackluster at best, the problem that I needed to solve for was clear:

“Phill needs an efficient way to discover great films to stream because he wants to spend less time searching and more time watching”

The problem seemed clear. However, I wanted to make sure to create a product that not only solved Phill’s problem, but provided him some useful tools along the way. So I asked myself:

“How might we help Phill discover great films faster that will also help him grow as a filmmaker?”

From here, I got to work.


Ideation

After I identified the problem to solve for, the first step in my development process was ideation (arguably my favorite stage of development). I knew that at the core of the product, it needed to recommend movies based on the streaming platforms that our user already owned. I needed to absolve his frustration with their recommendations, while also keeping in mind that he likes to make efficient use of his time. From there the ideas flowed:

I wrote all of my ideas down in no particular order, knowing that the next stage in my ideation process was to color code my thoughts by general topic. Here were the results:

The Problems

  • Hated recommendations from streaming platforms
  • Wishes he watched more movies

The Solutions

  • 1–3 daily movie recommendations
  • Trailers and relevant information for each movie

Features For Target User:

  • Expert analysis of movie highlighting what aspect of the movie to look out for
  • Blurb written by said expert explaining the highlighted aspect of the movie
  • Save for later feature in case user could not watch the recommendation due to his busy lifestlye
  • Ability to add notes as user watches the movie
  • Hamburger menu to access saved movies, past recommendations, past notes, and account

Results/Unintended Consequences

  • Watching movies relieves stress for the target user
  • Movie recommendations allowed user to be entertained at home, avoiding crowds and commutes (two things that phill mentioned he disliked about his day)

It was at this stage that I was able to clearly define the product that I needed to create for Phill:

“SIDEFLICK — An expert curated daily film recommendation tool for filmmakers using your existing streaming platform subscriptions”

Storyboarding

In order to visualize the experience of using SIDEFLICK, I decided to storyboard the experience. The goal of this was simply to get an idea of how the user would interact in the real world with the product.

As you can see, the use case for the product is simplofied into 6 steps:

  1. Can’t decide what film to watch as the user is navigating through Netflix.
  2. User pulls out their phone and opens the SIDEFLICK app.
  3. User receives daily film recommendation and read synopsis/expert analysis.
  4. User watches trailer of today’s film.
  5. User decides to watch recommended film, opens movie on Netflix, and presses play
  6. User enjoys film and enjoys their night knowing they wasted no time on searching for a film.

As I wrapped up the storyboard and visualized how the target user could use the app, it was time to develop the interface.

Sketching & Prototyping

Before beginning to sketch the screens for the application, I first identified what screens were needed to illustrate the basic functionality. With this being a rapid prototype, I skipped all of the account setup and onboarding process in order to jump right into what daily use would look like. The screens that were needed included the following:

  1. Login/Welcome
  2. Today’s Recommendation
  3. Watch Trailer Page
  4. Save For Later Action
  5. Add Notes
  6. Menu
  7. Previous Recommendation
  8. New Recommendation
  9. Saved Films

And thus, sketching began.

Once I created several options for each screen, I widdled down the best ideas into the 9 screens that make up the clickable prototype in InVision. In order to fully illustrate how the prototype works, the video below shows the following scenario:

  1. The user logs in and views today’s film recommendation
  2. User watches the trailer
  3. User has option to save film for later
  4. User adds notes
  5. User has option to swipe right to view past recommendations
  6. User has option to swipe left to get 1 new recommendation per day
  7. User views saved films
  8. User chooses a film from the saved films menu to watch

This scenario is illustrated in the video below:

To view an active version of the prototype for yourself, you can access a clickable desktop/mobile version RIGHT HERE.

Results

As I wrapped up this challenge and presented my work to my cohort, the first thing my target user Phill asked was,

“So when will this be available in the App Store?”

As a UX designer, hearing your target user express immediate interest in experiencing the application for themself was great validatation that this product solves their problem.

While this validation was great, there is still much work to do, and I was able to identify areas where I need to improve both my design and my process.

Design Improvements

The biggest addition that is needed for my design is an onboarding process. The overwhelming feedback that I received was around how the user would know how to navigate through the app considering there are multiple gesture inputs and rules surrounding these gestures.

I believe that this issue could easily be addressed with an additional screen that shows the user all of the gestures upon first login. The other option would be to place a closable modal above the home screen upon first login.

An effective onboarding experience would be essential for any user of this app.

Another area of improvement would be the typography. This is still an area in which I am developing, but with a few adjustments, the typography of both the app and my presentation could be improved.

Self-Reflection

For my first true experience with rapid prototyping as a UX designer, I am proud of what I was able to accomplish in only 3 days time. However, there are plenty of ways in which I can improve. By all means, I have a long way to go.

To start, I know for a fact that I need to hone in my user interview process. As I was conducting my interviews, I became very aware of just how easy it is to lead the user down a specific path based on what I want to hear. That’s a problem. As I move forward I need to be more adamant about keeping my questions open ended, and not worry about filling silent moments in the conversation.

Additionally, I need to be more intentional about removing myself completely from the development process. I need to realize more that I am not bringing MY IDEA to life, but the USER’S SOLUTION to life. This mindset shift will be a healthy exerecise for myself moving forward.

Overall, I am enthralled by the role as a User Experience Designer and I am beyond thrilled to see what challenge to embrace next.

-Garrett

Garrett Holmes

Written by

Garrett is a User Experience Designer from Austin, Texas who is on the never ending quest for a good cup of coffee.

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