Idea to Prototype: A Retrospective

The first project in the UXDI program at General Assembly was to design an app that solved a specific problem for a classmate. I paired up with my classmate Joahnna Te.

Getting to know the user

My interviews with Joahnna took three stages. First, I did an exploratory interview to get to know her as a person. I started by asking about her motivation to join the UX program at General Assembly. She mentioned a dissatisfaction with her previous career, and I used the 5 why’s technique to get to the bottom of it. At the bottom of it: She felt a spiritual emptiness with her previous job, because it didn’t offer her a meaningful sense of connection to anything.

Her desire for connection also shed light on her current hobbies, such as surfing and working out, which do offer that sense of connection.

This led to the second phase of our our interview, where I zeroed in on a specific problem she had: finding a gym when traveling. I tried to understand the specifics of this problem and explored the possibility of technology to solve it.

Finally, in the third phase, I showed Joahnna sketches and storyboards illustrating different scenarios and iterated based on her feedback.

Understanding the problem

When Joahnna is traveling, she has a hard time finding a gym. Typically, gyms require a 1 year membership, or else charge high short-term membership fees. Joahnna then looks for gym alternatives but doesn’t have the motivation to follow through. Having some kind of structure in place that requires her to work out (like the gym) is effective for her.

This may sounds straightforward, but it took me several iterations of back-and-forth communication with Joahnna to arrive at this understanding of the problem.

Iteration #1: AirBnB for gyms

The first solution idea was to connect Joahnna with other locals in the area who have gyms in their apartment complex. She could contact them and offer to pay them a fee for using their gym — which would likely be cheaper than the fees charged by a gym. After hearing feedback from Joahnna and a GA instructor, I realized it was a shady idea and was probably illegal. More importantly, Joahnna didn’t like the idea, because it didn’t make her feel safe.

Iteration #2: Gym Alernatives and workout buddies

The feedback I heard from Iteration #1 was to focus more on gym alternatives and workout buddies. I still felt, however, that I didn’t have a very clear picture of the underlying problem. I wasn’t sure whether the problem was a general lack of motivation or whether it was simply that she didn’t have access to a gym. I also didn’t fully understand what benefit a gym buddy would have — especially since she normally didn’t need one when she had access to a gym.

So I made two storyboards illustrating a couple both problem scenarios and showed them both to Joahnna:

Storyboard #1: General lack of motivation

Storyboard #2: Problem is specifically that she doesn’t have gym access

Joahnna gave me feedback that it was definitely the 2nd scenario. I then asked her why the workout buddy was necessary. Wouldn’t the gym alternatives alone be enough? She confirmed that yes, the main value was the gym alternatives, and the workout buddy was more for safety reasons. If she was in a new city, she’d like to hear from a local whether a place (such as a park or hiking trail) was safe.

Aha! Safety!!! I finally heard her concern for safety. She had been saying that from the beginning, but somehow I did not give it much importance. Now it all made sense.

Iteration #3: Focus on Safety

Now that I understood how important safety was to Joahnna, I re-designed the whole user experience to help her feel more safe. I added user reviews and ratings, for example, so that she would read other peoples’ experiences at each suggested gym alternative. I also required a Facebook login for extra verification around who we were pairing her up with.

After showing her the final sketches, I asked her on a scale of 1 to 10, how effective is this at solving her problem? She gave it a 9.5. Woot!

Self-Reflection

My key learning lesson from this project was that it is surprisingly hard to listen to people. My failure to listen came up in a couple of ways:

• 1) I was overly attached to my initial “AirBnb for gyms” idea. I really thought it would be super cool to build it, and somehow I was projecting my desires onto the feedback I was hearing. I felt very resistant to letting it go.
• 2) It took me several conversations to really hear Joahnna’s concerns for safety. She had been saying it all along, but I didn’t give it much importance. I thought, “ya ya ya obviously we want it to be safe….but let’s move on to what the app is really about.” I did not appreciate that safety was the #1 feature for her. I believe my ignorance on the issue is caused by a gender bias. As a guy, I don’t often worry about safety, and I was failing to empathize.

The solution for this? One strategy that worked well was to have a mentor or a peer group who can call me on my b.s. Showing the app repeatedly to my teachers and fellow students at General Assembly allowed them to call me out on how silly the original AirBnB idea was.

Another strategy is to use varied means of communication. After several rounds of verbal back-and-forth, I still didn’t quite get it. Finally when I translated the ideas to a visual story board, I understood where the gaps were in my worldview.