What I learned from the Coursera Design Interaction Capstone Project
During the past 10 weeks I participated the the Coursera Design Interaction Capstone project. The project solidified the individual concepts learned in previous courses by asking us to take an idea through from design life cycle.
The Theme
The first part of the course asked us to pick a theme. I selected the theme of Time, because it is something I feel like I never have enough of and wanted to explore ways to improve how I use my time.
The Interviews
The next step of the assignment asked us to interview people to ask them questions related to the theme. I asked people to walk me through how they schedule their day and manage a list of to-dos. This was a really insightful experience, I was able to get a glimpse into how different people manage their list of to-dos. The part that was most interesting was how varied the responses were. One interviewee explained a complicated system of notes on sheets of papers oriented different ways while another said they just rely on others to remind them about important tasks and forgetting about items is just part of life.
The Point of View
The next step of the assignment tasked us with creating a point of view. The point of this step was to articulate what we were tying to solve without solutioning. I created the following point of view statement:
“Better reminders will help people complete more items on their to-do list”
The Story Boards
The next step was to create a story board to explain how our product would solve a problem. I created the following story board:
The Prototype
The next few weeks took us through first creating a paper prototype, showing it to a few users, and then an interactive prototype. This was an interesting experiencing. Below is an example of the change from my initial paper design to my final prototype.
The differences between the paper prototype and the final design were informed my user feedback. The early stages exposed issues like not being able to edit tasks or mark them completed. The later stages added features like being able to see completed tasks and sort tasks. The final round of user testing involved an A/B test where I tried out an alternate version with two add buttons for various modes of user input.
Testing the Prototype
The next step was my favorite experience of the course. We were asked to observe people using our prototype. I gave people a loosely defined task and was able to watch them attempt to complete it. This part of the course was the most insightful because it showed me how important it was to have various people use the application. Each person used the application slightly differently and got stuck at different places exposing issues with the usability.
The Final Product
The final product was a polished working prototype which I have included below.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I really enjoyed the process of going through each stage of the design life cycle starting with an idea I came up with and seeing it through to a final prototype. Starting with an idea I came up with and working on the same idea for 10 weeks really solidified the concepts taught in the other courses and kept me interested in the project.
