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How I prototyped an app during a party.
At my co-working space ‘WeWork’ they throw parties quite regular. Free booze and free snacks usually make people want to gather around. One day, at the beginning of one of these parties I asked someone about an idea that I had in the back of my mind. “Wouldn’t be awesome if there was an app that…?” You know… the kind of party-talk at tech-related events. He seemed to dig the idea, but we I wanted to do more research.
Parties at WeWork are quite long sometimes. From time to time we have people speak with Q&As so they can elongate the party even more. Maybe I can create something I can show them and get their feedback before they leave.
I wanted to get the ball rolling quickly since these people were going to be here only for a while. So I pulled up my laptop started throwing stuff into the Sketch App with one thought in mind, proof of concept. One feature! That’s all the time I had. The idea was simple.
“If a tourist wanted to find people around that speak his or her language an app should be able to help him with that.”
If you just landed in South Italy you would be surprised how few people speak English in Naples. I myself had to struggle with my poor Italian there, it would’ve been nice to meet people that speak English, I know some that live there. Also, there are not many businesses in Miami Beach that accommodate Mandarin speaking guests. Even though we are getting more Chinese tourists.
Tic Toc
I have three interactions that I have to design.
- Find people that speaks Spanish.
- View his/her profile
- Send him/her a message.
Forget on-boarding, forget about branding, forget cool animations. Time is of the essence. So start by blocking everything with grays, since I don’t even have time to pick colors. Marvel, a prototyping tool that I use, has a good integration with Sketch App that lets me update screens insanely quick. I laid out simple wire frame inside sketch just to have a clear mind what I wanted the flow to feel like.
I actually prefer to do the wireframe on a wall with other ideas posted around, but as of now I have a hot desk at WeWork which means that I don’t have my own spot, which ends up being beneficial on this quick project.
All the views that I am designing have been done before, I am not reinventing the wheel, so this should go pretty quick.
List view:
Just a list of people with basic information and profile pic.
Profile view.
A single person screen-view with all of the languages that they know plus extra information.
Messaging view.
A place where you can send direct messages to other people.
After a few napkin doodles I started arranging my art boards on the sketch file, and set up my interactions flow as quickly as possible, and with the help of the Sketch-to-Marvel plugin, things were up and running in my phone in a matter of minutes.
Obviously, I wanted to show people the prototype, so I venture into the party and found people that seemed idle. I showed someone and watch him used the app. Oh boy! I forgot to add a few back buttons in some screens. I quickly went back to my working area to regroup with my notes, I made the fixes and tried with someone else. It was amazing how quickly people were spotting bugs that I never thought of. Some were transitions being too abrupt, some were the bad placement of buttons. After a while, I felt like I was sounding like a car salesman. I didn’t care, I was getting so much user testing fo-free-yo.
I was so happy what I was I able to accomplish this in a couple of hours, during a party where you would assume people are not very interested in checking new apps, but I guess the WeWork Members are a bit different. Heart Emoji.
If you would like to check out the prototype click the link.
Update: I worked on the app a bit more after that so the prototype might look slightly different.
Luis La Torre is User Experience Designer living Miami. He works with different clients from WeWork Lincoln Road. If you like to contact him you can find him on Twitter .
