Too many hobbies, too little time
This is a story about Nadia. Nadia is a driven, creative, detail-oriented professional who loves nothing more than to get sucked in to a new hobby. The only problem is that life doesn’t just wait around while Nadia is having fun. As she’s building her bird house or mastering chess, dishes pile up in the sink and she misses laundry day… again. Nadia wishes there was a way to learn new things and keep on top of her life. And so I created Hobby Horse to help her out!
To get to the bottom of Nadia’s problem, I conducted an interview to better understand her. During the interview it became clear that she needs to find some balance between work, play, and being a human. With that in mind I began to plan an app that would keep Nadia’s interests in check and her priorities in order.
I began by creating an affinity diagram to develop a persona. Originally, my interview partners and I tried to combine our traits together because there was a substantial amount of overlapping themes. However, this became confusing so we separated back into individual diagrams.
For her persona I landed on the Serial Hobbiest.
Her personality traits that I chose for the persona were introverted, creative, mono-focused, and detail oriented.
Some goals of a Serial Hobbiest are:
- To learn something new
- To have an outlet for my creativity
- To acquire a variety of skills/hobbies
Some of her frustrations include:
- When focused on something new, I find it hard to find time for the rest of my life.
- I have a hard time prioritizing tasks, errands, work, and hobbies.
- Because I can appear extraverted I have trouble carving out time to recharge
It was time to start building and testing an app for Nadia, the Serial Hobbiest. My idea was to create an app where you can explore new hobbies and interests with a scheduling component. Users could watch videos or follow instructions to learn new skills and set personalized reminders of their To Do list. This combination keeps the user engaged in an activity they enjoy, while prioritizing chores and errands. This was my way of temptation bundling to pair an enjoyable activity with something you’d rather put off.
The early UI sketches show the basic idea behind the app. It was rough and ugly and definitely needed some refining.
I tested the clickable paper prototype with 8 users, including Nadia. The feedback I received from user testing was generally good and most participants could navigate the app successfully. However, some users felt as though the scheduling component was too harshly worded and may end up feeling discouraging. The obvious omission of a “back” button confused and frustrated users. Also there wasn’t an option to “opt out” of the timer if the user didn’t want to use it anymore. I made some adjustments to the design and it was ready to present.
the final clickable paper prototype of Hobby Horse
Though the app was far from ready, I learned important lessons from my first project in UX Design. During the critique, the importance of engaging presentation and clear, simple ideas were stressed. User testing pointed out glaring problems in the design which helped me make a better product. I intend to use this advice and insight in future projects, but since Hobby Horse will be going back to the stables, it looks like Nadia’s on her own!
