Level 5 — Designing a Good Prototype
Authors — Gabriel Gaddi, Connie Du 8/15/16 10pm
Last Updated — August 17, 2016
Today in class, we discussed what makes a good design. For good design, we want to make the user “invisible” in order to allow our design speak for itself. In order to effectively accomplish this task, we began thinking of features we wanted for our application that could tackle the issues we found previously from our interviews. We began to create a connected web of features as well as begin our paper prototype. For now, we have decided to name our application BiteME in order to help us design.
List of Features for BiteME
Favorites
- Save recipes for easy access
- Suggest recipes based on user preferences
Profile Page
- My recipes listed out (carousel?)
- Point system and cook level
- (Maybe) display a chart with the nutritional statistics of my weekly eating (pie chart)
- Dietary restrictions, list of current tools/cookware
- Edit preferences
- Find a recipe (brings you to 20-questions page)
Questions on Account Setup
- What is your cooking skill? (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert)
- Do you have diet preferences/restrictions/allergies? (Vegan, gluten-free, no pork)
- What tools do you have to work with? (Pots, pans, stove, microwave)
- What are some of your favorite cuisines? (American, Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Any/No preference, etc etc)
Questions for all users for recipe lookup (20 questions)
Explanation: So the goal of the 20 questions is to help the user find a recipe that they can and would like to make. There wouldn’t necessarily be 20 questions but for now just acting as a placeholder name.
- What course are you looking to make? (Entree, dessert, appetizer, snack)
- How many people are you cooking for?
- How much time do you have?
- Would you like to use leftovers in your recipes?
Optional Questions
- What type of cuisine are you craving right now? (pulled from favorites)
- Any particular taste? (Sweet, savory, salty, spicy, etc)
Existing User-specific questions
- Would you like to challenge yourself? (recipe with higher cooking levels)
- Are you looking for something new, or something you’ve made before?
- Shopping cart/list of ingredients you need/want to purchase and have delivered from a local grocery store
Recipe
- Picture of recipe
- Ingredients of what you need
- Nutritional information
- Plus button next to it
We wanted to make sure we had multiple interpretations of our features by parallel prototyping. This way we wouldn’t be fixated on one specific design.
However, we didn’t want to be bogged down by so many different designs that we were unable to choose one and perfect it, especially due to our short time constraints. Our prototyping deliverables for Wednesday include two carefully crafted designs that we’d like to obtain feedback from.
This way, we are able to get diverse feedback on different designs of the same features, which we can later work with to refine our end product.
Prototype 1
This is our first prototype, which we did on paper. This was a sort of rough draft to get our ideas out. We took the ideas of “pair programming” and had a couple people working on the same prototype at once so that we could have more diverse ideas, find bugs/problems more quickly so that we could minimize defects. Although it might’ve taken just a little bit longer than if we worked on them individually, it was more enjoyable and our quality of work was improved because we could proof our teammate’s work in real time.
Prototype 2
This is our second prototype, which we built into an interactive prototype online.
The link can be found here.
We will be using the interactive prototype for our user testing.
Along with our prototypes, as a group we decided that creating a memorable mascot would be a way to make our app more fun and memorable. Below are some of the mascot designs we came up with.
Mascot Designs
Thanks for reading!
