My first project for the User Experience Design Immersive at General Assembly was to design a personalised app for one of our classmates.

I have interviewed Bill and tested my solution with him, and designed the prototype of an app that lets him know about the playdates in his area, and who of his son’s friend is attending.

Click here to view the paper prototype

Meet Bill

Bill is a creative professional, and father of Luca, 3 years old.

He considers very important that Luca can play with other kids of his age, but getting to know about kid’s events and meetings happening in his area is difficult.

User interviews

I run a first interview with Bill to find out more about him.

I have soon found out about his disillusionment with traditional educational methods.

He is very open to alternative educational methods, for which creative play is a fundamental pedagogical tool.

‘Schools are negative environments. When your kids are the most plastic, you send them to be raised by stressed professionals, while their mother and peers can do a much better job.’ — Bill

Sketching

After gaining a good understanding of Bill’s needs, I have started sketching my first draft of the app.

Participatory design

I have encouraged Bill to participate directly in the ideation process.

Bill sketched his own ideas and gave me examples of apps and interfaces he is familiar with.

Testing and iterating

The design went through different rounds of testing, followed by iterations.

The main playdates list went trough six significant iterations.

Prototype

Once finalised the design, I created an early stages clickable prototype, though which Bill can test the experience of joining an event, and invite others to join.

Next steps

Exploring the creation of specific types of events (e.g. repeated events, or ‘I’m going only if someone is going’, etc).