Chunk App — An Interaction Design story
After 7 courses, a Capstone Project and much sweat I have finished an online Specialization on Interaction Design from UC San Diego. Bellow I will highlight some of the best things I have learned during the course.
1- Human Centered Design
One of the most important things I learned during the course was that when designing a product (digital or not) one has to think about what people need. I learned some different techniques to discover design opportunities like how to observe critically people using a product.
In summary: When you design you always need to keep thinking about the users. “How is this useful to the users?” “Why someone will choose my design instead of the other?”.
2- All Design is Redesign
Everybody learn from others. In design is not any different. One great learning technique is to compare different designs (websites selling the same service for instance) to learn how they do things differently, what work best and the flaws of each. From there you can get some great insights and design your own avoiding mistakes from others.
3- Ideation
Another great insight the course provided was that is better to generate a lot of different ideas than stick with just one or two that you think it is great. When you get too attached with one idea you get emotional about it, it almost hurt when someone critique or tell you that maybe it is not a great idea after all. On the other hand, when you have a lot of different ideas, you tend to be more practical about it. “Why is this better than the other?”. One good way to show your ideas to others is to create a small “storyboard” illustrating the users in need of something and your product solving their need.
In summary: the more ideas you have, the more likely you will have a great idea.
4- Prototype
After generating new ideas it is imperative to test them. And test tem quickly and cheaply. You do not want to spend too much time and money into an a “not so good” idea. That is why you will want to make fast prototypes (paper prototypes are great and fast to build) to test your different ideas and get a quick feedback from others.
5- Test
You need to test your designs to see what work and what does not work. You need to distance yourself from the design here. It is the design that is being tested, not you. It is the design the needs some adjustment, not you. Thinking this way will make it easier to see things clearer and to test your design with others more efficiently. You need to plan how you are going to test your designs in a way that you can evaluate objectively (using statistics if possible). After you choose what idea is better (based on the tests) you create a prototype that will be closer to the final product and you test it again to gain more feedback until your final prototype is ready.
My design
I wanted to create an app that helped users be more productive in life (work, studies and hobbies). To create an ideal environment to focus and plan their activities and also incentive and remember them to continue doing it. I will go through the process I went.
1- Needfinding
To discover what disturbed people from their work and studies activities I spent some time observing them study and work. I learned that other people and notifications distracted them. Also some people got too tired after long periods of focus without breaks, making them less productive after a couple of hours.
2- Storyboard
This is one of the storyboards I created to show my idea and how it solved a problem someone was facing.
3- Paper prototype
This are only few pages of paper prototype of the app.
4- Low fidelity prototype
This is the homepage of a low fidelity prototype.
5- Planning
One very important thing to do when one engage in a project is plan everything. This are two of the weeks with the tasks I planned to do to keep track of how much time I needed and how much time I actually spent.
6- Testing (in person and online)
After I designed a more interactive and high fidelity prototype I was ready to test. First I tested in person (2 testers) to get feedback. Then I did some changes and tested again, this time online (4 testers). On the online test I did two different versions to check which one would perform better.
7- Final version
You can check the final version of the design using this link: https://invis.io/ZUDTVLW87
The idea of the app is to be simple, clean and useful at the same time. It uses a technique of focusing for about 30 min and taking small breaks of 5min to “recharge” and go back to the task. I also features pleasant sounds (customizable) to help focus as a type of “white noise”.
After 8 months I have to say that all the time invested was all worth it and I have learned how to learn what people need and how to design and test the product they need.
