UXDI9 — Weeks 8–10
My time at General Assembly is over for now, having completed the last of the 10 week program, about a week ago. There are so many changes for me now, and although it is a scary big world out there, I have the foundation I never knew I needed.
Our last project was to take on our first real client and help design a solution to their problem. I was paired with two amazing people that I both admire and respect for the talent and general maturity they bring to the team.
Our project:
ReferOwl; a desktop application that helps pair an apartment referral with a potential apartment searcher. Yes! A lot of carefully placed jargon to explain the who and what of the project in general. Initially, we were encouraged to create a series of questions based on the current application to prepare for our clients. My team was really great with this; we passed our ideas as if we were sharing some tasty candy treat. It was exciting and intimidating to breach our first real client.
Then came Monday; the day we were to be thrown into the deep end of the pool. First, our class’s morning stand up … discussing our weekend and our plans for the day. Then straight into the “thick of it!” We found ourselves in a small “break out” room with a bottle of water, glasses, and my homemade fudge (one of my specialties). Although our client(s) were really four people, we met with only one of the team members; it’s hard to break away from full-time jobs, to cater to a side passion projects, during normal work hours. Wearing a genuine casual comfortableness, Chris Cone came prepared to take on our crazy probing with seeming excitement. We did not disappoint.

Chris and his partners are all developers with more ideas than they have time to implement. ReferOwl came about a couple of years ago when a theoretical round-table discussion took on a more realistic form. Having no real experience with design, the ReferOwl team built a desktop application in their spare time. Chris was supportive and open-minded with our questioning angle of a more streamlined experience for the user.
Examining the current desktop application, we felt there were multiple opportunities for us to really get “dirty” with design; simple layout with a touch of parallax and minimal functionality.
The problem:
I) Referees
Users are searching for an apartment and would like to make a little extra spending cash on the side to help pay for move-in expenses.
II) Referrers
Users would like to benefit from their apartment referral program but do not know how to connect to potential apartment searchers.
Our Solution:
- A responsive website that helps to connect potential clients looking for an apartment with people who have a referral special to offer.
- Both clients would split the “finder’s fee” (referral special) with a small token towards the organizers for the application.
Then came the break-down. My team and I took to white boarding like flies to honey, sketching probable user flows and pairing them with potential mobile screens (mobile first … always!). Hours flew by as screens became more screens, multiplying exponentially! We started realizing the seemingly “simple” problem was “the user flow that never ends!” UGH! What did we get ourselves into!! But then, something wonderful happened, the screens just stopped.
No new screens were needed!
A pattern started to form and we were back in business!

Hitting the ground running, an MVP was drawn up with a project plan and submitted for approval.
Time to tackle the research! One of my favorite parts (yes! I am a nerd!)! Melding technology recommendations with cross-references on existing businesses, we began to sift our problems and delegate them into specific tasks.
One opportunity we tested, was to consider a re-brand along with logo and color theory. Chris was excited about the idea, encouraging us to explore a more cohesive solution. One of my team members and I started to study different ways to present the company; he started playing around with the current logo, and I toyed around with the current name … changing out letters and adding/subtracting letters. Our preliminary idea was to remove the Owl clipart-style logo and change the letters in the name to say: Refer@ll; thereby making the brand more inclusive and bringing in a hint of maturity. Touching base with Chris with our ideas, he was super supportive, which gave us a lot of confidence … maybe too much confidence ….

Then, came the testing. UGH! Yep! Our “brilliant” idea fell flat! …. at least the name part. People seemed confused about the “@” in the name, while others voiced concern about whether it would function in a real domain. My team took this back to the drawing board … literally!
At this point, my “helper” team member had undertaken the beginnings of wire-framing, thereby eliminating his ability to contribute, time-wise, to the designing of the re-brand.
Taking a deep pause, I pulled out the old sketch book and started scribbling. Mood-boarding and testing color proposals, I merged continuous design integration until I felt confident with the new solution: refer-all! Testers felt more secure using the new application with my re-brand proposal! Jack-pot!

One task down! Now to dive into comps and clickable prototypes. My team and I shared the work-load and collaborated on the wheres and hows of the project. All of a sudden, it was the night before presentation! How had that happened so quickly!?!?!
It was late night gridding and formatting alongside a once full bag of peanut butter filled M&M’s! Yikes! But, it was all worth it! Standing before Chris and one of his partners (that up until that day was secreted away from our project so he could see it as the end product for the first time), I felt confident and proud of our accomplishments! What a crazy turn of three weeks to transform it into a polished proposal that we could all stand behind!
Now, it has been a little over a week, and I can honestly say, I miss my class and my classmates! The experience I was privileged to be a part of, inspired me, matured my design ethics, and created a firm foundation of tools and tricks to propel me into the next chapter of my life as a hand-crafted Visual Designer! See ya’ll in the next adventure!

