Sprint to a Solution
We deal with technology every day. Most of us are probably unaware of how much we rely on and use it. Sometimes we may find little problems but we just accept them as a part of the experience. But as a designer I can’t let myself just accept these design issues. One day I started getting frustrated with the iOS app switching interface. Let me take you on my journey.
Through some research I found some inspiration from Jason Yuan and his article I Got Rejected by Apple Music… So I Redesigned It. Now I didn’t get rejected by Apple nor do I think that my experiement will blow the current design out of the water. But this did give me the confidence to try and push my own design skills further. So that’s what I did. Through the process I also used the ideas proposed by Jake Knapp in his book, “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days.” My experiment wasn’t an extensive study nor was my use of the sprints as detailed as they should be, but I was surprised what I learned from this experience.
Monday
For the Monday Sprint the task is to start at the end to find a long-term goal, map out the challenge and then focus on a small piece of the problem to solve. As stated earlier my issues arose form the iOS app switcher interface. Some of the problems I found included:
- The basic design seems to be created for a right-handed person. With the overlap of the screen shots it feels a little lopsided.
- The physics of the gestures are sometimes miscommunicated. Now most of these problems come from my own inability to clearly swipe left and right to scroll through and swipe up to clear the app, but maybe there could be a way to fix that.
- There is no clear way to close all the apps. When at the end of the day I try to clean up my phone, I sit with the app switcher open swiping up over and over and over again to try and clear everything. Why isn’t there an easier solution?
- Last is that the gestures may not be obvious to all users or people who are introduced to the iOS app switcher.
This exercise of breaking down the experience helped me to see what was really going on. I knew my goal was to create a better navigation for this interface but know I knew what specifically I could focus on to reach that goal.
Tuesday
The topic for Tuesday is to start focusing on possible solutions. It’s a time to get messy and break out that sketchbook. The specific process I used was to take a piece of paper and section it off into 8 parts to create small areas to sketch. My goal was quantity over quality. The more ideas I could get out, the more options I had. Each drawing led to the next unitl I had over 10 drawings in less than 5 minutes.
Quantity over quality will help get all ideas out of your head. Whether those ideas are good or bad, you can’t make sense of them until they are out on paper.
These drawings are not the greatest quality and most of the ideas I scrapped with the final design, but what I did get out of it was ideas and that’s the most important part. I fell in love with a problem and now I had so many solutions to draw from.
Wednesday
Now that I had a better idea of what solutions were worth prototyping, I could make a clear and simple mockup of what I would hope it would look like. My solutions included:
- Adding a button that will close all the apps thereby decreasing the amount of time and effort it takes to clear them all out.
- Adding a small close button to each screenshot to eliminate the confusion between the gestures
- A home button will hopefully help those who aren’t as familiar with the interface.
- Including a more symmetrical layout will make it easier for right and left-handed users.
So far this process seems to save so much more time in the long run as far as finding and fixing problems. It’s not extensive but more focused. Most of the time I just want to jump into prototyping a new idea without the brainstorming first. This was a great way to narrow it down.
Thursday
Now we get to take those ideas and bring them to life. Thursday is about the prototype. Now this prototype doesn’t need to be perfect. It just has to be enough to test and get feedback.
As I started to prototype, I noticed a few design elements that I could take out or leave behind because in the end it didn’t help with the final goal in mind. I was able to produce the bare minimum with the essentials to get my ideas across.
Using Hype helped to create a simple timeline to then be controlled by the user. Adding a couple timelines gave options to design the interactions with the two buttons. To view the prototype click here.
Friday
Friday is where you can get feedback on your prototype. Talking to other to see their reaction will be the biggest test of whether your solutions really are meaningful. Asking open-ended questions will bring out their ideas and help you understand their experience. A designer will see their own work much differently than the consumer. Their feedback is paramount.
Some of the questions I asked were these:
- What did you like about the experience?
- How do you think this compares to the current iOS version of this interface?
- What features (if any) do you like over the current version?
- How would you improve it?
- What features would you like to add in this interface? (that don’t exist in the prototype or current version) Why?
I got some surprising feedback. One element that absolutely everyone liked was the option to close all the apps at once. It was something I thought would be a good addition but I didn’t know how good until people saw it. Another point that was a clear win was the change in gestures to close the individual apps. Instead of swiping up, you only had to tap a close button. It made the action easier and quicker. All of the other positive feedback was scattered throughout the volunteers. Each highlighted something unique to their experience that they liked. For example, one person loved being able to see the whole screenshot instead of them being overlapped. Another liked the larger icon sizes, while another praised the more symmetrical layout. Now I’m not going to go back and add all of those features but it was refreshing to see that even though I have a better eye for design in general, there are still good ideas out there from regular consumers that I would never think of. Everyone has their own unique experience.
One of the most interesting points of conversation had to do with the overall dsign. The viewpoints were from someone from an older generation. Though they used the products on a regular basis, there are still some design elements that they got confused about. This person praised the design for its ease of use. This has to do with the idea of affordance. With my design the affordances took the guessing out of how to work the interface. Through the years we are trained and molded with every update of our devices to learn the new tricks and gestures. But not everyone is in that boat. So while most of the younger generations have no problem with the mashup of flicks, swipes, and taps used to perform certain tasks, there are others who can’t quite get there. The use of affordance is key to make a design that is more useable for everyone in general.
I even got some suggestions of features they would like to see or things that could be improved in my version. Everything in the feedback was useful and educational. It was the real test that showed the results of my efforts.
Conclusion
Looking back I can see an increase in my ability to problem solve. Instead of being so attached to a solution, this Sprint process narrowed down everything so that the outcome was valuable. It brought focus and clarity to the mess that sometimes designing can be.
Do I think my prototype is perfect? Absolutely not. But I am proud of the process and design elements I learned along the way. My eye for design is slowly being tweaked and improved with every experiment. Sprints are definitely something that I will use in my future designs. When I get stuck with a problem I will “Sprint” to a solution.
