Week 7 — Prototyping and “WTF?”
Having mapped out the simplest of simple UX last week, we started building a clickable prototype with InVision to turn our idea into a journey we can show to potential users. We drew the essential ideas of the screens on paper, and Jack worked his magic to create an appealing layout with some basic UI elements included. We are now in the midst of conducting tests, which we will synthesize early next week before moving to our first development sprint.
Having just a basic journey and showing it to users has been extremely valuable, and the feedback we’ve gathered from this week’s interviews has been really informative. It’s so easy to get absorbed into the world of your own idea and become detached from the reality that some of the “I don’t get this at all” and “WTF is the meaning of this?” comments really force you to see your project from an outsider’s perspective. Our goals for these interviews are to clarify the value proposition, see how users react to to-do lists and nudges during the day, and what kind of feedback would they want to hear about their productivity. We also did three online user tests, which was pretty fun to see how totally random people react to our prototype!
It’s interesting to see how Jack and Thomas are absorbed in their respective fields, and see stuff actually happening and taking shape — something that us business majors hardly get to experience.
We also had our third check up with our sponsors. We concluded what we all felt very true: while the value is there, it’s really hard to put a finger on it. Next week we will have to compile the interviews, have a look back at where we came from and what led us to this point, ask for help and just simplify, simplify and simplify. It’s an interesting (and frustratingly difficult) point of not really having closed all the doors behind yet, but understanding the pressure of time we have at hand.
