Mind the gap…
It’s often said that in order to be better we need to surround ourselves with people that help us to be better. After week 1, I wholeheartedly belive that’s true. Despite any kind of “gap” or insecurity that any one of us felt when we came here, we all endured the hiccups and came out knowing more and creating more than we had prior. Not only did we get to learn from our teachers but we learned from each other through sharing struggles and supporting one another.
In Project 1, we were tasked with creating a mobile app to solve a problem that our assigned partner faced in their everyday life. I was paired with Taylor Massey on the first day. The project began with a simple conversation: Just standard introductions, asking questions about our backgrounds based on the brief introductions we gave of ourselves at the start of the course. This went on for a while until we landed on asking each other questions about what our typical day looks like. We both took each other through what that looked like from start to finish. Along the way we just followed any interesting tangents to see if there were any viable seeds for this project to grow.
After identifying 3 problems for each other and why they were in fact problems, we restated each others understanding of the problem via email and followed up with 1 possible solution for each of those problems. Thereafter we reconnected in class to follow up to see what each other thought of each of those solutions. For myself, working through several options in the beginning and and having documentation of exchanges has always been important. It gives me a visual trail, tangible reference of ideas exchanged and allows me to see patterns that otherwise could get lost in the flow of conversation. Also, I find that weak and strong ideas have a tendency to reveal themselves when working in the written form since writing naturally forces you to first have a dialogue with yourself before you can communicate with someone else. This is something that I normally do and will continue to do as it proves itself useful time and time again.
Based on our feedback from each other, we both honed in on what problem we had, and agreed on the ones that were the best candidate for this assignment. Taylor felt that an app that could help him begin writing everyday would be of most value to him, he also seem to like my proposed solution for it. [See below]
Problem: Finding the time to write on a daily basis
Goal: To write everyday.
App that would work with your calendar in order to suggest pockets of time that you could designate to writing and alert you- the alerts could be in the form of a suggestion and be based on what you have already written or be project specific in order for you to generate or expand on an existing idea. This would not only serve to motivate and remind you, but also help you create new paths for the story or characters you are developing in your writing.
Having this stated for Taylor as well as myself, allows me to have a continual checkpoint. From there, I sent a long list of questions that I felt could help narrow the focus of how I would address Taylor’s problem and what that might look like. I took a look at what apps writers were using that were already on the market and sent my findings to Taylor to see his reaction to them. Although he found some of them interesting, they didn’t seem to resolve this specific problem that he wanted to address. Getting his reaction on these ideas or anything really, helped me refine what features he maybe would like and others that he would not. All of this, and continually reviewing each tangent idea against whether it was helping or hindering the original objective allowed me to make informed decisions in regards to design and function.
Having a general sense of Taylor’s personality, literary tastes, and design aesthetic, I could really begin to visualize how this app would take shape and began doing some rough sketches. I took a minimalist approach and sketched out about 4 frames to show Taylor. He really liked the idea and simplicity of having the pen on a blank slate to act as a visual reminder, rather than say…a typical alert. At that point, half the work was done because I knew I just needed to carry that subtle tone and approach through the rest of the app at all touchpoints for consistency.
Being a visual designer, I take inspiration from a lot of things. Seeing things, even words or beautiful type makes it real and memorable for me. I ran this idea of having quotes appear from a simple black background generated from the app with Taylor, cause I felt based on my interviews with him that he’d like it. Aesthetically, this made sense because so many of the design decisions thus far were of a simple and subdued nature, so I wanted to follow that trail. The idea also aligned with the goal of finding new paths of creativity and inspiration, so I felt confident that this app would be of value to the user that I was designing it for.
Thereafter, everything was really a matter of testing and checking every decision against the original goal and also directly with Taylor.
Getting to the know the user and the research component I felt were areas that I did a thorough job, where I could see growth for myself was in presenting my process. Though I am no stranger to showing process work I have always struggled a bit with it since for me it is a very personal thing that I do in the moment without consideration to whom I will be showing it to. This could potentially be a problem since often we will need to justify our decisions by showing our process, so I need to practice more care with that. Also, I was aware that I became suddenly self aware when presenting, and it affected my focus. Observing other classmates present their projects really helped me see what areas I could improve on and how I could do that.