Designing a mid-fidelity prototype in 5 days — UX design report
Hi folks 👋!
I’m Susy and I am a student at Ironhack BCN. In this article, I’d like to show you the design process behind a new mobile app to support forming (or breaking) a habit.
Are you ready? So, let’s go!
My goal
My goal was to create a new mobile app designed to support forming (or breaking) a habit. Based on user research, I had to identify an opportunity for an app to improve people’s day-to-day lives.
My proposal
An app that supports and kindly encourages you to do the things that make you feel good.
My research has shown that people would have the time to do what they want but do not use it. So, come one step by step.
— Day 1
Research Methods 🔎
User Experience (UX) Research, sometimes also called Design Research, is an umbrella of a broad range of methodologies focused on the needs of users, it is all about the design of a product or service to fit the needs of end-users.
User Experience is particularly crucial for digital products. However, each and every industry can employ the method; it is the feeling and involvement of a user while utilizing your services or products.
Because my Ironhack course colleagues represent a quite variegated bunch of people, I started to brainstorm with them to collect the first feedbacks and ideas.
This helped me to define the questions I want to use in my survey.
1. The Survey
If you want to know what consumers want, the simplest way is to ask them directly.
This step took me longer than I thought it would.
Creating a useful survey is not simple as it might seem. I had to read quite a lot of articles before I was able to properly create the questions for my survey. Probably the most helpful one was How to quickly create a powerful survey, an article suggested by our teacher.
When I was ready, I finally created a survey of twelve questions and share it with the internet. Thanks to the power of Social Networks such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn, I was able to collect over 205 answers in a day and a half.
The collected data gave me a clear overview of people’s habits and their lifestyles. The main outcome was that most of the interviewed people have enough time to do the activities they would love to do but, because of laziness, tiredness or snags, they don’t.
Also, from the collected answers did not emerge a single activity that people would like to focus on but rather different hobbies such as reading, listening to music, relaxing, doing exercise, etc.
At this point was clear that the application I was designing have to cover different purposes to be really useful. People will have the possibility to tailor it to their needs.
2. The Interviews
As a second step, I choose seven people among the ones that replied to my survey. I tried to focus on a specific group: adults between 30 and 60 years old that live in Spain or Italy.
I prepared a list of ten questions, but, clearly, not all interviews were identical.
On many occasions, I followed the flow of the conversation to get as much information as possible. Because in this phase of data collection the most important thing is to listen more than to talk.
Above all, it is important not to have any idea about the answers that might come: it is better not to start with prejudices and to be ready for anything. This is the key to developing the best product for our users.
— Day 2
3. Gather the results
Thanks to the replies I collect during my interviews, I proceed to create an Affinity Map, to analyze the common aspects of the interviewed people.
From the data gathered I was able to understand the following areas within the context of my product:
- Who my users are
- What their needs are
- What they want
- How they currently do things
- How they’d like to do them
I assigned a different color to each interviewed person to better define what they have in common with others.
This was a necessary step to be able to create a User Persona.
4. User Persona
User personas are archetypical users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users.
Lucia Williamnson is my user persona. She is a young woman that living in Milan. She’s single, she is extrovert, friendly but lazy. Her work is quite stressful and because of this she often does not have time to focus on activities that make her feel good. She uses the technology but she does not abuse it. Also, she hates alarms. ⏲
Creating Lucia has allowed me to create a user persona that includes different needs and expectations and, the fact that she has a photo and a biography, makes the real. In this way, I can create a relationship based on empathy and, create the best product for her.
— Day 3
5. Crazy 8's
According to its definition…
Crazy 8’s is a core Design Sprint method. It is a fast sketching exercise that challenges people to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes. The goal is to push beyond your first idea, frequently the least innovative, and to generate a wide variety of solutions to your challenge.
I personally believe that this technique is super useful for quickly throwing out different ideas.
I drew many sheets with all the things that came into my head. The sketches were not clear or beautiful, but they helped me to get all the available solutions out of my head.
6. The first prototype
After the crazy 8 sketches, I started researching Apple’s App Store for possible competitors. The goal was to identify good templates and simply integrates to design an easy-to-use app. My app aims to make people’s lives easier, not more complex.
So, I designed my first prototype by including more details and making the screens more understandable.
I shared my prototype with my classmates and assistant during the design crits session.
Several new ideas to improve and simplify my design were born on this occasion. The most important one concerned the usability of the Icon Usability.
A user’s understanding of an icon is based on previous experience. Due to the absence of a standard usage for most icons, text labels are necessary to communicate the meaning and reduce ambiguity.
When I think about it now I see this super obvious errors: but it is comical how sometimes we do not see the error in front of us.
— Day 4
7. Usability Test
Finally came the days of usability testing, where I tested the prototype with real users.
During these sessions, I invited some people to “use” my app without giving them any information about the functionality.
I needed to understand if my app was adequate for the purpose for which it was designed.
— Day 5: Official presentation day
My Mid-Fi prototype in Figma was ready for public presentation.
I decided to show only one application flow, from when the user logs in to when he receives the first encouragement notification.
8. Interface and application flow:
The app I designed is a friendly app. It has a friendly approach to the user and from the first moment, it makes sure to pamper them by calling their name.
During this interaction, Lucia decided to create a new habit in addition to the previous ones: she wants to go for a run.
Lucia also decided that ideally, she would like to go three days a week at different times. But, as I wrote before, the goal of this project is not to make a reminder, but an application that supports users. Lucia has decided to put only the notification with the motivation on ON and not to add any alarms or other notifications.
In addition to this, with this application, Lucia can choose whether to receive the encouraging reminder and on which day/time range.
And finally, the application with a polite message will congratulate Lucia and remind you that (in this case) she has another pre-set goal.
9. Additional screen
During the interview and also after the design critique session, the importance of people being able to check their progress was emphasized. That is why I also designed some screens with these functions that seem necessary for many users.
Conclusion
👉 Thinking about the app is not just a matter of design.
👉 Research is not only the starting point but also what we have to take into account during the whole process.
If there is no good research and clear data to work with, it is not possible to do a good job.
👉 Organization and order go hand in hand: no step can be skipped during product development. And each step needs its own time.
👉 In the end, it is good to remember at all times and during each step the final goal of the project. The user is the protagonist, not the will of the designer.
👉 It is essential not to complicate our life or that of the end user in any way.
👉 I discovered also that I love the research phases and study the behaviors of the people
👉 It is not possible to do this work if we start from a biased point of view.
👉 Always keep the focus on the end goal.
Thank you very much for reading, and if you would like to share any comments with me to improve next time, I will appreciate it
