Design process of my “RemindThem” app for the Coursera Interaction Design Capstone Project.

The design process for my app involved several steps. The first step involved choosing one of several design briefs presented by the course instructors following by a Needfinding process, Brainstorming, Storyboarding, Paper Prototyping, Heuristic Evaluation, Wireframing, Digital Prototyping and A/B testing. In this post I will attempt to briefly explain the core design decision I made throughout the project, what I learned from users and the key features of my app that address a user need.

Design Brief:

I chose to centre my observations/ interviews around the design brief of change and time. I was interested in learning more about how people go about arranging/scheduling quality time with others with a particular interest of finding out how technology could help people adjust their habits/manage time better in order to more efficiently plan quality time with others.

Point of View:

My initial observations resulted in the following point of view (POV) for my app: “Busy people typically don’t have much time to spend quality time with others and scheduling such events can be very time consuming and stressful and can often require them to alter their weekly routines or habits to do so. By using time smartly, spending quality time with others can become a stress free and frequent activity.”

Storyboarding User Need:

Following my observations there was one user need in particular that stood out to me. That was the need for users to be able to receive required/requested info from others easily without having to continuously pester/chase them for it (which tends to waste the users’ time). For example, one user mentioned that she had to keep asking her friends over and over again for their annual leave dates before she could continue planning their holiday. She got frustrated and stressed chasing them for their annual leave dates.

As a result of my observation, I drew up the below storyboard which attempts to depict a similar user need as described above (panel 1) and showcases a possible app that intends to solve this user need; the app concept allows users to set up automatic reminders for their friends to complete certain tasks/send back certain info which gets rid of the need for the user to continuously pester/chase their friends etc.

Storyboard panels 1–6

Storyboard panel 7 depicting user need met.

Low Fidelity Paper Prototype :

Following storyboarding my next step consisted of creating a hand drawn paper prototype showing all the essential elements of the user interface of my app idea (see images below). The paper prototype instantiated the above storyboard. Users are able to set up new reminders that are sent to specified individuals at specified frequencies. Individuals are automatically reminded to complete reminders/tasks until they are completed. The user is notified when a reminder has been completed by their recipient and receives any relevant info i.e., attachments/comments they have requested. The user can also view progress of their sent reminders and can receive/complete reminders that have been sent to them by others.

Heuristic Evaluation:

Once my paper prototype was complete I conducted in person and online heuristic evaluations. The heuristic evaluations highlighted major problems and changes that needed to be made to the prototype. They main changes I made to the prototype following the heuristic evaluation was changing the home screen of the app to display the user’s received reminders as this is one of the most important features of the app, adding a hamburger menu system and changing the wording of the buttons to make it slightly clearer what they mean/do (see image below).

Home Screen from Paper Prototype (left) to Interactive Prototype (right). Home screen of interactive prototype displays reminders that the user has received from others and a large button at the bottom that allows the user to quickly set up a new reminder for others.

I also split the ‘send new reminder’ page into several steps that the user has to go through when setting up a new reminder as this makes it clearer what is required of the user when doing so. This also minimises the amount of text on each screen (see images below), reducing user’s cognitive load — users now also have the ability to save their progress and come back to it later on if needed so that they do not have to start creating a new reminder from scratch all over again.

“Set Up New Reminder” Paper Prototype Design. User has to scroll down to see all required fields i.e., frequency and end date and has to click on “assign members” to pick who they want the reminder to be sent to. This makes the screen appear cluttered and interactions slightly unintuitive.

“Set Up New Reminder” Interactive Prototype Design. This screen was redesigned to make it easier and clearer for users to follow steps/screens when setting up a new reminder. Splitting the steps into several screens minimises the amount of text users are presented with on each screen.

Alternative Design Testing:

Following the in person and online testing I designed an alternative of the ‘Received Reminder’ screen to see whether a redesign would make it clearer and easier for users to respond in one of two ways: ‘complete’ / ‘cannot complete’ reminder.

In the in person testing one of the participants was unsure whether ‘complete’ and ‘cannot complete’ simply meant setting this as a status of the reminder as complete/cannot complete for themselves or whether this also meant that it would be sent as such back to the individual who initially sent them the reminder. As such I was interesting in knowing whether the redesign would make it clearer for user what their response actually means.

Additionally, in the redesign, the user is prompted to add a comment/ explanation on the main screen whereas in the original design users are prompted to add an explanation for “cannot complete” on a subsequent screen. I was therefore also interesting in finding out whether this redesign would make it more efficient (faster) for users to make their response in the case that they cannot complete the reminder compared to doing the same action in the original design (see images below).

A/B screens of Interactive Prototype. Screen A depicts original design. Screen B depicts redesign.

A/B Testing Results — What I learnt from Users:

Overall, both sets of users in the A/B screens were able to easily and quickly update the status of a reminder as “cannot complete” with no noticeable differences between the users in their ability to do so regardless of the changes to the design. Interestingly, the difficulties in usability actually derived from the home screen which was initially surprising to me.

One user in Group A and two users in Group B mentioned that the design of the home screen could be improved to make it more obvious to users what info is actually important on the screen since they spent several seconds trying to figure this out. Additionally, one user mentioned that some kind of colour coding would be helpful to distinguish between different types of reminders (seen/unseen/complete) as it takes a couple of seconds of scanning over the screen to understand which reminders are which. Furthermore, one user in Group B mentioned that the home screen consisted of too much text which overwhelmed them and as a result they had to spend several seconds reading the screen to understand what was on it.

As such, I decided to redesign the home screen. I minimised the amount of text displayed on the home screen and implemented a colour scheme for the different types of reminders. I also repositioned the order of the different types of reminders, with “new” reminders shown at the top since they could be regarded as most important, followed by “seen” reminders and then “complete” reminders (see images below).

Panel on left shows that original design of the home screen. Panel on right show the redesigned home screen with colour coding, less text and clear hierarchy of the different types of reminders.

Overall in regards to the A/B screens I noticed that users in Group B did not mention writing an explanation for the “cannot complete” response whereas users in Group A who were more saliently prompted to write an explanation did. As such it is possible that in design B user’s may overlook this requirement as such I decided to stick with design A but implement a new screen that appears after pressing the ‘Complete’ button which prompts user to attach required documents and add comments before sending back to the individual who sent them the reminder (see images below).

1. Users have to attach attachments and add comments before clicking the ‘complete’ button. 2. & 3. Users displayed with confirmation screens.

1. Users are required to click ‘complete’ / ‘cannot complete’ button before being shown the option to attach required attachments and add comments (2.). 2. Attachments and comments are now on their own screen and users are required to click the ‘send’ button to proceed once attachments/comments have been added. 3. Confirmation screen.

Summary of User Need and Solution

In summary, my user is someone who would like to organise something with their friends/ significant others but who gets frustrated when they have to keep continuously reminding their friends/ significant others to do something before the planning can carry on. Consequently ending up wasting a lot of time doing so. Specifically, my user is someone who for example would like to go on holiday with their friends but has to keep pestering their friends for their passport details, annual leave dates/availability etc before they can proceed with booking something. My app aims to help individuals such as these by allowing them to easily set up reminders for their friends to do certain tasks/ provide certain information to the user. The reminders are sent to their friends at specified frequencies until they are ‘completed’. This way the user is no longer required to spend a lot of their time reminding their friends to do certain things and is automatically notified once their reminders have been completed by their friend(s). Therefore, my app aims to change people’s habits/ help them manage time better in order to more efficiently plan quality time with others.

Why my work is unique

My app makes the solution to the problem unique as users are able to send automatic reminders to others and request related attachments effortlessly which are kept in one place. This way the user can keep documents and reminders in one place without having to search for them through texts/emails etc and without having to chase individuals for confirmation of completion since they are automatically notified when a reminder is completed. Overall, reminders and associated info can be aggregated in one place without being lost.