Post #2 Development/ implementation: The journey of Happy time website and app
For the needs of AdandPrLab at Panteion University, and specifically for the lesson ‘Digital creativity: apps, games and coding lab’, we were requested to come up with an idea for an innovative site and an application and bring it to life.
Our idea was to provide a guide that its goal is to provide offers about several entertainment activities in order to satisfy all people’s preferences. You can see more details about our idea at our previews post https://medium.com/@anna.labrou/happy-time-is-your-time-enjoy-more-pay-less-27692aefcbac
We build our website and application considering the special needs and characteristics of our users. In order to do that we build some Personas.
Our target group consists mainly by people 17–50 who want to have a lot of suggestments for economical entertainment activities .
We build two personas. The first one is Athena, she is 26 years old, she does not want to pay a lot of money when shes goes out. The second one is Steve , He is 40 years old, he works a lot and he does not want to spend a lot of time in order to find entertainment activities . So he wants all the suggestions gathered in one site-app.
Building the prototype
At the beginning when started building our website ,it was hard for us to choose the design and structure of our website. It had to be user-friendly with warm colors that would attract the eye and that would offer a pleasant search for the users. So we choose yellow color which shows joy and happiness. Moreover, we used black and white color for the menu and the background which is pretty easy on the eye. After , we put all the information that we gathered.
After we move on the next step which is building our application.
Proto.io, is a difficult application that needs a lot of work. Specifically, if you try to add too much information and data, as we did, the structure of the app will break down. It doesn’t endure a big quantity of information, especially in scrolling feed. We tried to use the same structure and design for both website and application in order to be relevant.
As for the coloring, we used colors similar to those who were used in our site. For example, we have used yellow not only to show joy and happiness but also to help the user by making everything easier for him. Moreover, we used black and white which is pretty easy on the eye. In order to help the user, we chose the plain sidebar and also put the help center inside the app. What’s more,the ‘Menu’ button is visible in every page of the app and users can easily navigate freely and with no worries of getting lost. We also constructed our app to be in a vertical form, as this is more familiar to everyone who is used to hold his phone vertically. Finally, we placed the ‘Menu’ option on the upper left side of our page, as most if the times,the human eye is considered to focus right there.
We realized that our website had many of the Usability Heuristics such as:
1.Visibility of system status(6/10)/Always keep users informed about what is going on./
2. Match between system and the real world(10/10)/Speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system oriented terms /Also follows real world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order/.
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design.(8/10)/Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed./Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors(9/10)/Expressed in plain language (no codes)/Precisely indicate the problem/Constructively suggest a solution.
And then Maggy Kontou taught us how to use proto.io an online application where you can create your own prototype. It was a challenging experience because creating an app from scratch is not as easy as we thought it was in the begging.
Thankfully, with the right guidance of Miss Maggy we managed to make it and we are satisfied with our result especially if we consider that we never had any type of application experience in the past.
We came across with a lot of challenges in this journey. For us, a challenge was to understand what the users really need and not what we need as individuals. That’s why we do users research, mainly with questions in a small group of people. Another challenge that we deal was to cooperate and find solutions in a big team, with personalities that have different ideas and opinions. In this journey, apart from the difficulties, we obtained new experiences and we learned new things about apps, websites and things about us that we may did not know. First of all, we learned to be researchers, we made a research for the audience and we searched everything about our idea. Secondly, we learned some important things about design, that will be very useful for our future career, especially in a future where mobility will play a first part role in the global society. Moreover, we learned that the cooperation and the fair division of work is very significant, in order to have a dignified result. And last but not least, we learn how to do a constructive brainstorming.
Here are some advice for people who haven’t use this app and website. Firstly, we consult us to to watch some tutorials in YouTube, then they can also make an informed research for the basic features that need to have an app. Moreover, you ought to be occupied with proto.io a few weeks. Then, you can make a research in a small group, in order to see what your potential users need. Also, do not forget that a good cooperation with your team, will direct you to a satisfied result. You can develop all of you an idea and not leave it in the first thought!
Special thanks to Betty Tsakarestou and Dr. Stavros Kaperonis for this great and challenging semester!
Suspiciοus Minds team
ANNA LAMPROU Maritina Filiou Alkistis Joan Vlassia Manteska Rafaela Panagiotou
