About // goal

“The way to get started is to quit talking, and start doing".

-Walt Disney

This concept project demonstrates how I go through the design process, speedy in this case. It shows how I am able to quickly understand a person, solve a problem in their life with a simple application, and communicate my design decisions to others.

I met my single user, Scott, on a Tuesday, and had 3 days to understand and empathize with him, do research, define a challenge, rapidly ideate, prototype, test, and iterate. I accomplished this and produced the app Stop, Scott and on Day 4 I presented my design.

My goal for this project was to create an interactive prototype that solves a real user problem through achievements in 1) Empathetic design, 2) Concept Design, and 3) Design communication.

Project Time
Four days

Methods

User research and understanding

Competitive & Comparative analysis

Defining problems/opportunities

Rapid ideation

prototyping

usability testing

Tools:

Pen and Paper

Lots of post-it notes

Marvel

Challenge #2

Understanding Someone Quickly

Usually, when you first meet someone, you might learn about where they’re from, where they live, what they like to do on the weekends, but rarely do you dive right into someone’s struggles, their problems, or their pain-points. This is where we found ourselves on Day 1 of class.

Opportunity #2

Build Trust & Be Honest

I am usually able to immediately connect with a person because I approach people with an open mind and nonjudgemental nature. By asking meaningful questions and being an attentive listener I was able to earn Scott’s trust which allowed him to open up to me. I also had to be honest with him when I wanted to reinterview him because I knew there was something deeper to be discovered.

This project was a great way for me to demonstrate my ability to go through a design thinking process. Although the process has clear stages, it is not linear and I found myself iterating and revisiting stages as the project progressed.

Empathize

This was a unique project in that there was only one end user in mind, Scott. I wanted to get to know him as much as possible so I spent the entire first day of project time interviewing him. I asked him open-ended questions to get him to tell me his story. I wanted to know his daily routines, his passions, his interests, and most importantly, his struggles. I was curious, open-minded, and trustworthy. I learned Scott is an avid rock-climber; almost everything in his life revolves around climbing. His diet follows a specific regimen that benefits his climbing lifestyle, he uses group messages to coordinate climbs, and he often feels everything else in his life is put on the back-burner. Every new topic we discussed, somehow lead back to rock-climbing. I left that day thinking I had to solve a problem for him to make his life around rock-climbing, somehow, better.

Define

As I synthesized my data that night, I could not draw a clear problem solution. I went around in circles trying to solve problems that Scott really did not need to be solved. I wanted to make grocery shopping easier for him…nah. I thought about menu planning…nope. “What about a new type of ‘To-Do’ list for him to set weekly goals,” I thought…ehh, maybe? I decided to ask for another interview.

Empathize pt. 2

I came into this interview with a few specific questions. I wanted to know more about his goal setting, how he makes choices, how he rewards himself, and what parts of his life are getting the back-burner. As we were conversing, I was finding out that he feels like he neglects “general human stuff” like keeping his apartment clean, doing laundry, making his bed, and calling his parents. Then, I noticed something sketched on a few pages of his notebook: “Get the F*ck Up”. I was intrigued, and I inquired. Turns out that he does have a pretty big problem: Scott will waste up to 30 minutes in bed every morning scrolling through unnecessary and irrelevant material on his phone. This truly bothers him because he feels the time is completely unproductive and usually makes him rushed or late for the day after negotiating and rationalizing the wasted time over and over. He would much prefer to use his valuable time efficiently, for example, getting a work-out in or tending to that “general human stuff”.

With a good lead, the next part of the interview was spent learning about his wake-up routine pre- and post “phone scrolling” problem. Scott does like to use his snooze one time and waking-up is not his problem, getting out of bed is.

Define pt.2

With these new insights, I was able to define a true problem statement for Scott. Then I was able to draw a hypothesis statement to help me in the next stages of Ideation.

Problem Statement:

Scott, an active and busy student, and athlete, needs a way to get out of bed promptly without spending meaningless time on his phone because he wants to make the most of his valuable time.

Hypothesis Statement:

I believe that by disabling the use of his phone upon wake-up, he will get up promptly and achieve more productivity in his life.

Ideate

Before jumping into ideation, I did some research to find out what is currently available for Scott. Based on my Hypothesis Statement, I wanted to do some competitive and comparative analysis. There are over 30+ alarm clock apps in the App store which almost all focus on the waking-up part, but I couldn’t find anything that would get Scott out of bed. I also did some research on productivity in the morning and found interesting studies on the effects of starting your day off with a productive habit.

Next, I began coming up with ideas. As I ideated, I would ask myself a series of questions:

“Is this Scott’s problem?”

“Does this solve Scott’s problem?”

“Is it focused and simple?”

Idea 1:

Ideas 2 & 3:

Prototype

Scott’s user flow:

Marvel Prototype:

My Insights

Along with being a great introduction to the design process, I gained valuable insights during this project.

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