Creative Alarm
“ Using color, sound, and action to stimulate your senses first thing in the morning”
A retrospective on my first assignment at General Assembly.
by: Jackie Strubberg
Week 1: Rapid Prototyping- interview a fellow student (Casey) to identify an everyday problem that they have and address the solution.
Opportunity: One of Casey’s personal goals is to improve her daily routine. Casey hits her alarm several times in the morning and has a hard time getting motivated to get her day started.
Solution: By incorporating more fun into her morning routine, Casey will wake up feeling more motivated and ready to start the day. Using a hands-on and visually stimulating experience will get her off to a good start!
How did I get there? Time for the process…
Discovery Phase (research, research, and more research…)
When interviewing Casey we talked a lot about Spotify, Instagram, photography, what she loves about Austin and some challenges she has around her daily routine.


Getting into the mindset of my user…

What I learned:
- Casey is very creative. She is a photographer and loves drawing and sketching
- Casey struggles with her morning routine. She snoozes the alarm several times before getting up.
- Casey is very social. Spotify and Instagram are her top favorite apps. She loves discovering new music and seeing what her friends are listening to.
Ideation:
“Things that u need to do, don’t feel as fun; if they were more fun, I’d be more inclined to make those habits”- quote from Casey about her morning routine.
My design challenge- How do I make the not-so-fun activities more engaging? Since she’s a visual and hands-on learner, can I use that to help engage her with this alarm app?
Prototyping

Before moving into InVision, I asked Casey for feedback. She suggested using Snapchat as a way to post instead of Instagram to make it more of a story and less about a permanent posting. Since she would be sketching first thing in the morning, she wanted a more temporary option. She also suggested using a random prompt for sketching. Since this is the first thing she’ll be doing in the morning this is an easier way to help engage her.
After Feedback, I went back to the drawing board…

When the Alarm goes off at 7 am there is a flashing colorful light(stimulating her visual eye), once she taps on the clock Casey will get a prompt to sketch(getting her more hands-on). This example shows a tree, she then has the option to move to ‘saved sketches’ or post on ‘Snapchat’. In her alarm settings is where she gets to pick the stimulation for that morning. Perhaps Casey wants sound and color one morning, but maybe another day she’s in the mood to just sketch. She will get to choose by checking the option. Using visuals, sound, and action Casey will be more motived and engaged in her morning process.
Where could we go from here?
- We can expand this by linking Spotify playlists to her alarm. Spotify would choose a random song on her playlist every morning to give variety to her morning routine.
- More categories of sketches
- Expand the social media platform to send sketches to your friends (ie, Instagram, Facebook, etc).
Take-aways from this week:
I learned a lot about time this week. Time management is key. I could spend all of my time perfecting one slide for hours and hours, but done is better than perfect.
The user is key. Always go back to the user’s habits. What makes them tick? What motivates them? How can this app improve there life? These are all questions I asked myself over and over during the process.
For my next project, I will challenge myself to dig deeper into my interviews. To ask more questions, and to ask smart questions. More specific questions will help me target a problem or opportunity sooner so I can start the ideation process.
Even though this app was designed specifically for Casey it's important to think about how many people might benefit from it. Having options really helped me here.
Finally, remember the importance of ideation. Always be creating. Always try something new. Think outside the box, because most of the time your solution lies right next to it.
If you’d like to see the final Prototype click here: https://jackiestrubberg718766.invisionapp.com/public/share/P5WU1NJ39