Coursera Interaction Design Capstone: LifeSync
My initial idea for LifeSync came from experiencing habitual actions throughout my day to day life. For this capstone project, I chose the brief for Time. I wanted to learn about the habits of people using alarms throughout the day and how might an app prove beneficial and more useful for very routine-like activities after the alarm goes off. Because often times, an alarm is a catalyst for routine-like behavior.
NEEDFINDING & IDEATION
I observed 3 participants, who set routine daily alarms and had them walk me through a step by step process of what happened after they did the item they set their alarm for (ie. waking up, remembering to take vitamins, time to workout, etc.) I want to know whether a smart device could be used for routine-like activities and connect to a smart home or work place to accomplish these tasks more effectively and efficiently.
From the observations, I learned that the users could benefit from having set routines for different aspects of their lives (ie, waking up, working out, going to sleep, etc). From observing all of the users, I noticed they all used their phones to set their alarms, and I saw that they performed the same tasks, somewhat in order, after the alarm went off. I wanted a way for those routine tasks to get done by themselves.
From observations I was able to brainstorm many ways to be efficient with time to complete tasks. Daily routines should not be a series of arduous tasks that takes toll on your mental health. Habitual routines shouldn’t give people anxiety. Routines, therefore, should be more efficient and less stressful.
I was able to find many types of inspirational apps that I thought could be beneficial to include in my research. From checklists to timers and calendars to motivational apps, I was able to culminate ideas that could serve my purpose.
STORYBOARDING & INITIAL HEURISTIC TESTING
My initial attempt at envisioning my app functionality, I built out a robust map-centric view of a persons home. Upon getting this version in front of many users, I found that it wasn’t as user friendly. This came about for several reasons. One, many people have multiple level homes, that would take several blueprints to sort through. Second, many had smart devices outside of their home they wanted to sync to. And third, not enough information could be displayed with a map view. I decided to switch up the approach and have a standard modular layout that could scroll infinitely and could display as much information I thought necessary. With further heuristic analysis based on several user inputs, I made several other changes.
DIGITAL PROTOTYPES & TESTING
After the initial testing of the paper prototypes, I revisited the brief. I was still on track. I focused on the brief Time, and wanted to know whether smart devices at your home/work place could accomplish tasks more effectively and efficiently. This would enable you to also easily gain peace of mind away from the home. (ie did I turn off the lights, close the garage door, etc) and would enable you to see at a quick glance all of the connected devices via the app.
The changes I made to the app were critical to giving the user a brief glance at all the smart devices connected to their home. I created icons so that all the devices wouldn’t look the same and could be easily detected at a glance. Also, for ease of use, I put the details on another screen so that the UI didn’t start to get clunky. By doing this and eliminating those elements on the screen, it helps give the user only what they need at the time, instead of trying to give them everything on one screen.
I moved on to implement these changes via digital mockups. I started in InVision so that the user could gain a sense of how the flow and basic interactions would work. Another round of testing, and I found more opportunity to improve the functionality of the app. I gave more control to users to have multiple ways to accomplish the same thing. By adding additional navigation through out the app, I was able to allow users to navigate in a non-linear way throughout the app. This was one of the major flaws I found; users struggled to move through the app and find what they were looking for. After applying these final changes, I was able to move on to design and bring LifeSync to life.
The biggest lesson that I learned from this project was that there is a lot of research and lo-fidelity prototyping happening before anything is even implemented digitally. A lot of planning went into the initial idea, and a lot of vetting of useable and functional elements were tested and re-tested before executing a digital form. I realized that users can ultimately shape and move your initial ideas into ideas that you haven’t even thought of yet. By continually utilizing user input, I was able to come up with a solution that worked much better than originally planned.