I participated in the interaction design capstone project on coursera from April to June. With the guide of tutors in UCSD and peers, I finished my product — SCHEDULER. Here I want to share the process I went through during these 10 weeks.
Achievement
I chose the design brief of Time which narrowing to schedule of people’s life. My final design is SCHEDULER, a to-do list app which provides efficient ways to add tasks or reminders quickly. SCHEDUELR has two ways to add new tasks, through detail event or voice event. Detail event is like general to-do list performs, users need to input detail information for the event. However, there’s a “set as normal event” function inside it. This means if the detail event is set as normal event, it would be added into normal event list and users only need to set date next time. On the other hands, users can add new voice event by recording the task information. In both ways, efficiency is improved.
Click here to view final prototype.
Overview
The whole process could be divided into 5 stages, observation, ideation, prototype, evaluation and testing. In the progress of development, iteration for changes and improvement is also ongoing.
For better explanation of the process, I will go through each stage in detail.
Observation
At the beginning of the project, I observed three people about their experience of scheduling to find user needs. Three people had different ways to arrange their time, calendar in PC, Wonderlist app in smart phone and handwriting. None of them were fully satisfied with their experience.
Ideation
In this stage, I thought about what functions would help users as much as I could. It was a brainstorm session without the consideration of feasibility. I also tried some existed apps or software to get inspiration. At the end of this stage, I concluded the point of view for my design: I’m trying to create a combination of to-do list and calendar which provide efficient ways to quick add new tasks or events.
Some of core functions that were thought out in the first pass are listed as follow:
1. Users want to checked the schedule in different period, like day, week, month or year.
2. Users could add the common events quickly which are recorded by schedule.
3. Users could tag the event to categorize them.
4. Users could switch into private mode to record their personal life.
5. The schedule may support speech recognition, more broadly, it has an efficient way for users to input the event.
In the actual design process, I went back to ideation stage sometimes and rethought about the functions I listed before. Did this function really help users? Was this function necessary? The performance in the final prototype was under several redesigns.
Paper prototype
Before making an online prototype, paper prototypes based on different scenarios would help to design the interfaces. So two storyboards were created to see what might user do with the app. Meanwhile, paper prototype was created to reach the actions in the processes showed in storyboards.
Heuristic Evaluation
Peers and I worked together in this stage. We evaluated each other’s paper prototype and gave some feedbacks. Nielsen’s criteria were introduced to evaluate the prototype. We also gave the severity rate for the problematic functions.
It was a good chance to examine the app. Based on the suggestions from peers, I abandoned the private mode as it was duplicated with tag function in some degree.
Prototype
I made my electronic prototype by Marvel. Making prototype required me to think about in which way could serve users better. Although I had the drafts from paper prototype, it was still a challenge to present the functions in the frame of devices. The color scheme, the layout, the icons, too many things need to be considered. But I still say it was an interesting process.
Test prototypes
In-person testing was implemented firstly. I created the protocols to protect participants’ privacy. They tried the prototype and gave me some feedback. The feedback was really helpful. Some were focused on the interface designs and some were focused on the functions. I redesigned for the issues raised.
One of the participants thought the way of adding a normal event is quite cumbersome. Thus, I decided to redesign the process of it and put the further test online. A/B testing showed as follow.
Based on the testing results from four participants, B process is more efficient. Meanwhile, some other feedbacks were also given by them. I listed the changes need to land and updated the prototype.
Conclusion
This is my first time to complete a interaction design project, I really inspired from the whole process. I was not one hundred percent satisfied with my product as its target user group is too broad. If give me a chance to go back and restart the project, I think I would spend more time on observation and ideation part to get more better ideas. The project has finished, but the career for interaction design has just started.