Coursera Interaction Design specialization capstone: Bilbaobizi
Last September I decided to give a step forward in my design career focusing on user experience, so I started a Coursera specialization about Interaction Design imparted by Professor Scott Klemmer of UC San Diego. The capstone project of the course was to design an application from scratch. And that’s how BilbaoBizi was born.
Design brief
Provided by Coursera
Time
The way people represent time changes how they think about it. Wall calendars remind us of years, seasons, and the dentist appointment 6 months in the future. They codify weeks by wrapping every seven days, and it’s easy to find the weekends — they are on the edges. Clocks help us coordinate with others. Historically, many countries’ citizens adopted pocket watches and clocks along with the railroad. Before the railroad, there was no need for precise time. Daily schedules help us plan. They can encourage us to “fill” our days, or talk about being “free”. When we punch the clock, or bill hours, we turn time into money. These representations are human inventions. Most digital time representations — — clocks, daily and monthly calendars, … — — simply translate paper and gears into pixels and beeps. With the computation and sensing capabilities of mobile devices, can we find a more personal and joyful way to interact with time?
Glance
We are surrounded by information. Some might even call it overload. How might technology show us the essential pieces at a glance, so we can quickly navigate through the noise to get to what we really want? We compulsively check email, Twitter, Facebook, and the news — — just in case there’s something there. Right now we are doing the filtering and finding ourselves, why not let our devices do it for us? How can a screen summarize information and present just the most relevant parts (especially if it is tiny)? How can these devices use social and physical context to more effectively have the key information ready at a glance?
We had to choose between various design briefs and I decided to include two of them: time and glance. I wanted to design an app addressed to tourists. It would include all the information needed when visiting a city as a journey planner and recommendations so tourists wouldn’t have to lose time searching for locations or getting lost while trying to get back to their hotel. But what makes the app different is that it includes a funny way to discover beautiful spots of a city only locals know while enjoying a game: a treasure hunt.
Long time ago a teacher of mine told me to write about the things that I deeply know so I created the app based on my home city. I could also develop it for any city in the world with the help of Tripadvisor and local consultants.
Needfinding and ideation
First of all we had to choose our target user and identify a need. I focused in a multiple target user: the visitors to my city, Bilbao. I interviewed some traveller friends and asked them to brainstorm in front of a cup of wine thinking about their trips to other cities and where they take foireign friends to when visiting Bilbao. We started to wonder: “What do you need when you’re a tourist? How could our city become a better place for visitors? What does my city need?”.
Storyboarding and early prototyping
So I started imagining user journeys and prototyping the early stages of the app.
There were two main aspects of the app I considered important to fulfill. First of all, it should be useful. It should include everything needed when travelling to an uknown city. And second, it should be gamified. It should be a tool that would improve your experience when visiting a city and make it fun and unforgettable.
So I prepared two paper prototypes and started testing.
I tested the paper app with several users, which gave me really useful feedback about the interactions I had to improve and all the pains that can be avoided for the user when putting attention to detail.
And all this lead me to the first digital prototype for BilbaoBizi and the treasure hunt, made with Balsamiq Mockups.
Navigable prototypes & online testing
Later on I developed the interactive prototype via Marvelapp and most of the graphics I used are the ones provided by the program. After using Marvel for the whole prototype, I’d recommend Sketch or Photoshop to develop the screens of the app, using Marvel just for the navigation rather than the whole process.
The online testing was made via UserTesting.com, kindly offered by Coursera which provided insightful feedback and became a very useful tool to improve the prototype.
Final thoughts and prototype
It’s been a long journey studying user interaction and there are many things I’ve learnt designing the app from scratch, but I think that the most important thing I’ve learnt is that providing a good user experience is mainly trying to solve and avoid problems and that can only be achieved with a lot of testing, low fidelity prototypes and observation.
So this is my first child app, she’s called BilbaoBizi. I hope you enjoy it.
