Learning UX/UI Design — Mynder

In the information-saturated world we live in, a problem that can arise is how do we get information that matters to us. What do we want to see during the day, how do we keep track of things that are important, and how can that be made easier.

There are a variety of apps available for newsfeeds, email, fitness tracking, social media, and so forth, but they don’t necessarily allow a user to view everything at once, instead necessitating jumping between a lot of different apps and websites.

As part of a UX/UI course, I set out to find a better way to organize information to present to a user. I met with various people to see what kinds of information they looked for during the course of any given day, how they organized it all, and what could be done to streamline everything.

What this led to was a personal dashboard app that I called Mynder, to emphasize the personal nature of an app to mind all of your important daily information: calendar, notes, email, fitness, weather, & social media updates. I was inspired originally from a desktop personal homepage, iGoogle, which was shut down several years ago. Going from that idea and looking at some other mobile-sized data feeds, I sketched out and trialed a few prototypes with people.

As I started to get a feel of what would and wouldn’t work, I’d splice the working ideas together to start to make the app framework. Some rough iterations later, I began to flesh out a progressively better prototype.

Having settled on a good main screen, the work then became how to flesh out higher detail subsections. A user could get a more granular look at their desired data, but maintain a front page of the most vital snapshot they cared to track at a time. Fitness goals, locations for weather, notes & news feeds would be customizable, granting each user some flexibility in crafting a personal homepage that suited them best.

This led to the first working prototype that I called SlapDash, as the rapid iteration frequently felt like I was just throwing things to see what would stick.

However, having something that worked and I could trial with users to find out any usability issues. Did the visual language make sense, could a user find their way about with minimal guidance to completing a task I’d given. Were there any issues they found while playing with the app that I overlooked? Was there something they wished it had that it currently lacked? With these feedback sessions in mind, I made the final prototype (though that sounds oxymoronic), giving it the final name of Mynder. The main page itself didn’t change much from SlapDash, though widget pages had some icon changes, and layout alterations to improve usability.

All in all, the entire process for this final project was quite enlightening. I came from a background of print design, and so had what I feel was a good concept of what could work visually and what couldn’t. This project went much broader in scope, from needfinding interviews, much more rapid iteration than I’d done with print projects, to usability and preference testing with end users, all leading to the end goal of Mynder, which I still feel like I can find ways to improve as a working concept.

Taking a simple design brief and fleshing it out into a much more fully realized idea involved a great deal of steps, and became a continually evolving process. It allowed a great deal of freedom while having enough constraints that I didn’t feel overwhelmed, and found ways to grow my design brain.