Casestudy
Interactive Design & Animation
Introduction
Tasked with creating a system that would meet a current societal need from the impact of covid, my team and I used the idea of normalcy to base our solution. Covid disrupted everyone’s life. We believed a system that could bring back some aspect of their daily routine would be an effective solution. We came to the idea of an application that would provide entertainment in the form of drinks. Wether it was a morning coffee, or happy hour with co-workers, this routine wasn’t possible in the new setting of covid. Our system would try to mitigate that and bring entertainment to our users. We were able to test our system digitally before getting into visuals and designing a hi-fi prototyped system.
With Covid-19 in full swing, the challenge was to create a system providing its users an interactive experience that met a current societal need.
Our goal for this challenge was to find a realistic solution. We were heading towards a direction of a system that would allows users to have the same experiences they would on a regular day, from the comfort of their own home. However, research and testing would have to be done in order to find our answer.
Research
Before creating a system we thought would satisfy the challenge, we had to find a more defined audience scope to satisfy the problem for. The research for this project was structured by persona development. The system planning was faciliated with the guidance of our personas and target audience.
As directed from the prompt, the team agreed the target audience for our system were people directly impacted from the pandemic. These impacts include variables such as mental, financial, or social. We based this conclusion on all our own experiences and friends and family around us.
Each team member created a persona and empathy map pair based on our target audience and project goal. I created “Sarah Jones”. She was essential in keeping me rooted on the core challege and solutions throughout the project.
Testing
With the idea of the system in mind, we started the testing phase. We wanted to make sure our designed system would be intuitive to the users. The majority of our testing revolved around a college aged demographic because of the limitations Covid set for us to connect to users.
Before testing users, we created an initial information architecture (IA) with three scenarios of use (SOU). These SOU’s were:
1. View the ingredients and instructions to make an Original Margarita
2. Buy a Lime from Target
3. Share a Starbucks Chai Tea Latte via Instagram Stories
We based our testing on these scenarios because we believed they would be the key actions of the app’s users.
Our goal with the closed card sort was to see if the cards provided were able to be sorted into our three labelled tabs. With eleven users tested, the results matrix showed that most users came to the same conclusion. This showed us that our initial information architecture successfully aligned with our users’. We added three survey questions at the end to help clarify the best vocabulary to use for our tabs.
We were able to move onto treejack testing for a better refinement of our system. We tested six users on our three SOU’s. The results were positive and showed that our system was intuitive to the users. We iterated on our IA and gave it a quick update based on our most recent testing.
We conducted a competitive analysis to see how other recipe and food applications organized and presented their information. We found most apps utilized a card system to display options. Some apps displayed their ingredients and meals with a vertical scrolling menu.
Design
The design phase was guided with our moodboard. We took inspiration from designs that were minimal in color and graphics, but provided attention to imagery when present. We felt the system would be best represented with a more modern and sleek design.
The moodboard guided our system visually and helped us design consistently as a team. Taking inspiration from minimal designs highlighting the imagery displayed, we decided that approach would work best with our system.
After agreeing on our visual direction, each team member branched off to design low-fi wireframes with the research in mind. We tried to vary our wireframes in order to see the possible directions we could head towards.
After receiving feedback on our three wireframes, we sketched out a combined style. The sketch utilized the strongest aspect of each wireframe.
The style guide was designed with the moodboard in mind. With a more minimalistic style in mind, we went for a clean, sleek look. The bright pops of brand colors create a more joyous brand mood, and the simple icons help the users easily identify their purpose.
The end product of our design process was a hi-fi of our 3 SOU’s.
Create an Account and take your personalized quiz.
Scan your waste and redeem your points for that item.
View the Scoreboard and look at the account with the most points.
View the ingredients and instructions to make an Original Margarita
Buy limes via the Target application
Share a Starbucks Chai Tea Latte via Instagram stories
Conclusion
This project was a good experience that taught me how productive and smooth a project can go when communication is clear between teammates. I learned how to incorporate other systems like Illustrator, and After Effects to create a more polished presentation of the final product.
Looking over this case study again from the future, with more UX knowledge under my belt, I believe a more effective project would have been achieved with improved research practices/choices. One example is how we dealt with the target audience. I believe if we had incorporated things such as user interviews and journey mapping in our process, the team would’ve had a more clear idea on what the users really wanted, verses us making assumptions in some areas of the system.
Overall, I really did enjoy the whole process of this project. I believe we created a system that could actually be implemented in the real world.