iMessage: Where Majority Rules
The skills gap is getting wider and wider, but don’t tell that to General Assembly. Through their rigorous immersive courses, GA is doing everything in its power to close that gap. It is with this mission to close the gap in mind, that GA educates thousands of students every year to grow and develop skills within the tech field.
In order to successfully arm students with the necessary knowledge to enter the workforce, General Assembly has meticulously crafted their immersive courses to demand students full time and attention. As such, students in the immersive programs are temporarily putting a strain on their personal relationships with friends and families.
Over two weeks, I explored to find out if there is a way that I can improve an aspect of communication on a pre-existing app to support the immersive students and keep them tapped in to their social support systems. For my sake, as a new immersive student, I was hoping the answer would be “yes”.
Research
The first, and most important, step in the process was to conduct user research. Since the goal of this exploration was to improve communication for immersive students, it was imperative that I speak with former students. I was able to speak with 3 recent graduates of the program to gain insights into their experiences. While all of these students expressed their appreciation for the program and how rewarding they ultimately found it, they all also overwhelmingly expressed sentiments of isolation from their regular social networks, both real and digital. This was to be expected. Everyone throughout the enrollment process in these immersive courses makes sure you understand the commitment you are undertaking.
However, there were some other insights that I was able to uncover as I dug deeper in to these conversations. Using affinity mapping to synthesize the information, extracting key takeaways from each conversation, I started to see patterns emerge. There were common themes being pulled throughout all of my conversations.
For those unable to read my handwriting, I’ve outlined the key insights below, and included a larger image of the area I would ultimately focus on.
I need logistics, not conversations
I forgot to respond
I feel isolated
I need to respond/react quickly
I need options of how to communicate
Frankly, many of these did not seem worth exploring to me. I honed in on “I need logistics, not conversations” because the nature of what they were communicating about was changing, not just how often. Students were losing those daily interactions they were used to having with friends and family. They were no longer swapping stories via text about their day or something funny that had just happened to them on the subway. Instead, they were focusing on coordinating meetups, grocery store runs, and logistics. These insights uncovered during the affinity mapping phase led to the creation of my user persona, Allison.
With Allison in mind, it was time to finally articulate the problem and ultimately try to tackle it.
When GA students enter the immersive program, they feel isolated from their normal support systems.
Allison is struggling with the stresses the course is putting on her personal relationships, how might we help her feel like she isn’t cut off from her friends and family?
Design
What really stuck out to me from my user research was that even despite the stresses the course put on people they wanted to try and see friends and family when they had the time. They just couldn’t necessarily help to coordinate these meetups because they had to pay attention in class and had work to do.
To start coming up with solutions I ran through mental exercises to get the mind moving and I started to hone in on an idea of essentially creating a new group event. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t necessarily solve the user’s problem. I wanted to eliminate as many back and forth text messages as possible but there was still the challenge of coordinating that event with everyone’s schedule. How do we know when everyone is available? Where do people want to go? How do we know what works best for everyone? We need agreement! (Or at least majority rule). And once I realized that, a poll within iMessage became the solution.
Time to start sketching!
The initial low-fidelity wireframes allowed me to get my ideas down on paper and flesh out the process of creating a new poll.
After running 3 usability tests with the Lo-Fi prototype, I was able to gain valuable insights that were translated into mid-fi wireframes. Notably, the “Group Menu” was fully eliminated as there was no need to add an additional step when I could simply move the button to the previous screen (more on further challenges I ran into with that later). It also led to my finding that the “submit” button on the “Create New Poll” screen from the original Lo-Fi wireframe was not clear. Users couldn’t make the poll go live in their group chat, which is the whole point of the new feature. This was resolved by adding a “submit” button to the Mid-Fi wireframe.
With strong feedback from the paper prototype testing, I was able to move on to mid-fi wireframes in Sketch. Implementing the changes previously mentioned, I was now able to create a workable Invision prototype.
Click here to view the prototype
Feeling pretty good about how the project was coming along, I moved on to another round of usability testing. Provided with a scenario that put testers in the shoes of GA immersive students, I asked participants to complete the following task:
Using iMessage find a quick way to coordinate an upcoming happy hour with your friends.
To say the testing didn’t go as I hoped for would be an understatement. Turned out, I had a Major Issue on my hands.
Of the 3 users who participated in the test, 2 out of the 3 had trouble finding the “create a poll” icon
The good news is that once testers were guided through this process, all 3 were able to successfully complete the task and watch the poll go live in their group chat. Thus allowing users, and GA students in particular, to coordinate events with their friends and family while eliminating the time consuming and stressful act of planning the event.
Next Steps
After running in to a major issue during the mid-fi usability testing, it is imperative that changes are made. I need to explore other possible places for the “Poll” icon. During my testing 2 out of the 3 users initially went looking in the “app” menu adjacent to the text entry field. It will be worth exploring if moving the button there will yield better results. There are also other features that can be built out and tested including reminding people to vote and allowing multiple users to create a poll. However, those will come after the core functionality is able to run smoother.
Final Thoughts
This was a meta project to work on as my first exposure to General Assembly and UX. It was a great way to get myself familiar with the people, culture, and experience I was undertaking at GA. It was the perfect project to break the ice and encourage us to interact with our environment. Just by completing this project I have a better sense of what I can expect from the immersive course and learned that despite all the work that lies ahead, it will be worth it.
