Ever since I could remember I have been fascinated by people and what drives them to do what they…
By: Anthony Randall
Tags: First Post, UX, General Assembly

Ever since I could remember I have been fascinated by people and what drives them to do what they do. I analyze with great scrutiny my own thoughts and actions, and feel a deep sense of empathy for others as well. I found my calling in UX Design, where humans are the central element of all of the work that we do, and I’m excited to share with you my first steps in this journey.

It was my first day at General Assembly and immediately we were prompted with a task, to address the the pain points of students who are enrolled in an immersive program at GA.

The Problem

Immersive students are often subjected to long working hours through the evening and occasionally the weekends. This can often result in a lack of communication with friends and family.

Research and Analysis

We began with user interviews of our peers here at GA (outside of the classroom) and ambushed unsuspecting yet helpful students in their natural habitat. I had my reservations about the guerrilla approach to user testing, but what better way is there to gather information about GA students than talking to them one on one while they’re up to their necks in final presentations? While their tales of long hours and lack of social interaction confirmed what we already knew to be the problem, there was more to discover ‘between the lines’ so to speak.

In order to make sense of the all the data I’d collected and transcribed from the interviews, the affinity mapping approach was my best friend.

Who knew sticky notes would be my savior?

With every bit of data stuck up on the wall, I could get a holistic view of all of my data from the interviews at once. From there I started grouping, taking a step back, regrouping, rinse, repeat….

Finally having categories that identified common themes in responses, I could start pulling out my insights, the key ones being:

1. They possess the tools to stay connected

2. They use features to limit their connectedness on their devices

3. They use tools to manage their time, but still feel that there’s enough of it

Persona

The insights I discovered were key to the rest of the process that I was about to embark on. How can we fix the problem in a way that is explicitly for the individuals I spoke to?

So now I have all this information from interviewing fellow students embarking on this immersive journey. I can’t design a unique app for each and every one of them, but I can take those common themes and pain points I uncovered in the data to create a “persona”. A hypothetical user who embodies the very real goals and pain points of those individuals that I interviewed.

Meet Katherine:

She’s a 26 year old student in a GA immersive course. Her goal is to take the time to engage in social activities outside of GA, while also dedicating the proper amount of time to her work, while also limiting her distractions.

She finds notifications from her phone to be distracting, is buried in her work, manages her time in a calendar application, yet struggles to find the time to talk to her friends and loved ones off campus. I got to work prototyping on paper the perfect app that I could think of to help her.

BUT FIRST, I have to state the exact problem I’m addressing, learned from all the data. Or in other words, the problem statement.

Although students taking part in an immersive course at GA have the tools to communicate with friends and family, they find it difficult to balance their time to include socialization with the people close to them off campus.

So here we are. The final piece of the foundation of the rest of my work on this project. The ‘pièce de résistance’ if you will.

I immediately went to prototyping. And while I wanted to jump right into Sketch and come out the other side with a beautiful work of art, alas, I started with the most simple of materials: paper.

Low-Fidelity Prototype

I ran some tests on some users to gain their feedback to see whether or not I was headed in the right direction. Users confirmed that there were some features that worked well and those that didn’t. It was back to the drawing board (literally) and I finally found a solution that fit with the goals of my persona.

If you recall, the persona uses calendar applications already, likes to limit her distractions, and wants to find the time to socialize with her loved ones off campus. My idea was to integrate a shared calendar feature in iMessage (most common communication medium discovered in interviews) in order to better help with her time management AND keeping connected with loved ones.

Now it was time to hop into Sketch, and there I created my Mid-Fidelity prototype. It embodied the basic functions I wanted it to perform, but in a ‘stripped down’ fashion. This prototype is still only meant to test the user flow and get a feel for how the user will interact overall with the application

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

I was proud of the first design I had ever created in sketch, and it was time to test it!

Users were unfamiliar with the terminology for the access page, in this case ‘widgets’ — though familiar with that page, they didn’t have a name for it and therefore were unsure how to access it.

Some users considered different buttons on the access page to complete the proposed task — taking that into consideration and expanding on those options I can gain a more comprehensive view of the users thought process as they complete the proposed task within the app.

So, it’s time now to assess and reiterate my design until I can get it just right. I know that if I keep in mind who I’m designing for and what they need, I’ll get there in good time. I mean, that’s what UX is all about!