Project: <TechTerm>
Designing a new App
Overview of "Tech Term - a fun way to learn technology"
The Task
My client Louise had the difficulty of not knowing a lot about technology. She has the feeling of being left out of something that she considers important to know. At work or in her social live, it comes up everywhere but many terms and programs still don’t really make sense to her. She isn’t sure where to start.
Interviews and User Research
Through Concept mapping I learned about what really creates that problem. She was never really introduced to it. Her attempt to learn about technology mostly take her to YouTube as she has problems reading through long texts but this isn’t enough to make her confident enough to say that she knows it. Also as we went into her day-to-day routine it became clear that she is a quite playful person who is unlikely to sit down on her own to study.
Describe your image.
Describe your image.
Describe your image.
Research and Participartory Design
Through creating user flows and storyboards I had to rethink of how she would get to use my app in the first place. As she is a user who isn’t used to use technology it was important to create an app that would make her use it and that she would trust. It also appeared that she is a very playful person who prefers to be in a jolly surrounding.
Trust, simplicity and fun were my key points to make this work.
With a clearer view on Louise’s personality I sketched a Paper Prototype in order to run some user testing and see if my idea would help solve her problem. Also to discover what functions would be needed in order for her to use it. Through testing I found out that there was a misunderstanding on how the app would function which had to be changed. We also talked through her expectations and what she would wish this app to do for her and made a few changes and additions accordingly.
First sketches and Iteration
First sketches and Iteration
First sketches and Iteration
Usability Testing and Iteration
After running through the created app it was very soon clear that her idea of how to use it was a completely different one than I had expected. She loved the idea though so we went ahead and made changes around the concept in order for her to have fun using it.
I also run a few tests with other potential users and used Facebook to get more opinions and suggestions. It became clear that the basic idea was a great one but that the functions where a bit unclear and needed to be more precise about what you could do.
I needed to specify what which navigation button meant to do and make the interface a lot cleaner for the user not to get distracted by it.
It seamed to make no sense to have a ‘Category’ page, as many understood it but weren’t sure if they would use it. The icon got confused to mean ‘a selection of pictures’ and it was more expected to find collected cards on this page.
For a game my idea seemed to be too busy and “Wikipedia like” so I decided to narrow everything down to the necessary.
As sharing the learned terms was something Louise found very appealing I discovered that this was not the case for others so I created it as an optional feature.
Solution
The app allows Louise to learn about technology in a super fun way and gives her the opportunity to find randomly something new. It gives her as much or as less information as she needs to understand a new term and allows her to share that with her friends.
Future Possibilities
For the future app I would like to test it with more users to enhance the app. The app could be used for a lot more categories than technology and has the ability to add more specific topics as well.
I would like to discover possibilities for it to get used in schools to help kids learning in a more self-discovering way.