Protoyping an App: Insights & Thoughts
The last weeks were quite hard. I enrolled the last course on coursera.org for the Interaction Design Spezialisation. The Capstone Project. I had to be creative, determinded and aspiring. It wasn’t that easy, also because I couldn’t really rely on other people. (As well even not on the coursera team..) However, I did my prototype named “Locality”. It’s still not perfect, but I’m working on it. Maybe you will see it sometime…
Locality App — How come?
In the beginning I brainstormed together with my boyfriend. We thought about the design briefs (Glance, Time or Change) and we came to the decision to create an App, where you have everything on one glance. An app, which helps you to find user-relevant informations. You want a coffee, that matches your taste near your location? You want to plan a trip and are looking for the top sight? For these and so many other reasons I created the Locality App. I did some storyboards, paper-prototyping unless I got to web-based protoypes.
I had many decisions to take, but still I knew from the beginning how the look and feel should be in the app. I really wanted that the users can connect via Gmail, FB, Instagram — so it’s just that easy to find things you will value and save for other days. That was important for me.
While prototyping and focusing on my idea, there were users coming up with the thought: “Why using this app? Why not using google?” Everytime I laughed and told them: why loosing your energy on scrolling on google when you can have all your informations right in an app? It shows you reviews, pricing, the menu-card, the location — just everything! You don’t have to go to Google Maps — by one click into your dashboard information you’re already in it.
Since I’m living in the city, it’s harder to get everything together. It’s true, you can just walk around and discover your environment. But what could be easier? An app where it takes the informations, that it needs to help you find the things you want! Because of that, I had the feeling to implement a special feature, where you can find events near your location. When your GPS is on, it will show you on the maps the events in the city. So if you’re free and spontaneous, just go on the Locality app and check what’s up in your city.
After users tested my application, I could see where the app will have some struggles and how I can improve it. It’s still not perfect and I have to test it again and again, but after all: it was worth it! The expierience I got from the course, will be for sure used in the future!
Wanna see the prototype? (May change from time to time)
https://marvelapp.com/24h8522/
