Introduction
Before taking this class, I had given very little thought to the designs of everyday objects that I use such as doors, chairs, faucets, and keyboards - just to name a few - and how my interactions with them vary based on their specific implementations - some are more easy to use than others and understanding why is important. Similarly, I had also overlooked the designs of phones, apps, and websites and what distinguishes good ones from bad ones. When I did not know how one of those devices or apps works I would blame myself rather than the design of the product. Likewise, even when I first encountered a product and knew how to use it, the design process that went into the final product did not cross my mind. We as users expect a product to be convenient and easy to use. If this is not the case and a product is difficult to navigate, there is nothing stopping us from looking for a better, more intuitive and convenient good. Thus, as designers, it is important we learn about design processes. There are many important steps that go into creating a user-friendly, intuitive and overall useful product that keep users wanting more. The five main topics regarding the process of good design discussed in this post are:
1) Understanding intended users 2) Finding value in critique 3) Iterative design/prototyping 4) Upholding ethics 5) Incorporating accessibility
Intended Users
For a product to be successful, the designers must understand their target audience and work as a team to create a product. This may seem obvious, but is very easy to overlook when ignoring holistic approaches; someone may value artistry over practicality, for example (toilet with no flusher affordance). Understanding what the problem is and how to provide a solution to users is the main objective of human-centered design. One way to begin the design process is by brainstorming as a team and keeping all options on the table. Creativity is encouraged, no ideas should be eliminated right off the bat because all assumptions about users made need to be closely examined and recognized, and one way of doing so is by considering all possibilities of design implementations. Specific methods that our team used to better understand our target audience and what would appeal to them were: contextual inquiries to learn more about users wants, creating user personas and scenarios to better understand specific kinds of users we want to attract and the situations which would cause them to use our product, and storyboarding to consider specific cases with general users. Affinity diagrams are useful for organizing user desires once a contextual inquiry has been conducted. For College Connect, we have two target audiences – high schoolers and college students – so we needed to think of possible reasons why our product would be useful. As college students who have been through the college application process, we know what information is easily available to high school students but believe that it is not indicative of everyday life on a campus. There is more to a school than a history of alum, buildings and sports. We have two easy categories of users to consider, but must be careful to not assume much more about them than either being a high school or college student.
Iterative Design/Prototyping
Once the intended user(s) has/have been considered and what tasks they should accomplish using the product are the next step is to create an initial prototype of the product. To maximize efficiency and eliminate programming, we used low-fidelity paper prototyping before moving on to high-fidelity prototyping. Low-fidelity prototyping allows designers to quickly make amends to a design after receiving feedback from a user. Changes can range from big fixes to minor additions. Adding and eliminating features is a lot easier in low-fidelity prototyping because they do not need to be coded from scratch and/or files of code do not need to be altered. Paper prototypes also eliminate any personal attachment to a design as many hours are not spent on the process of writing code, fixing bugs and waiting for programs to compile. Paper prototypes allow us to learn which parts of our design are doing well and which parts are not. Once the paper prototype has fulfilled design requirements and usability tests, the next step is high-fidelity prototyping, in which the product is applied, or implemented, on a device that is closest to the actual end goal. In our case, this meant creating screenshots of what the application would look like on a phone using Balsamiq. The digital mockup included a lot of changes that came after we created initial and final paper prototypes such as login options, new search interface for potential connections, audio call options and improved privacy. As the process of design continues, iterative design maintains its power by getting the designers continually closer to the final product. For College Connect, we did not begin high-fidelity prototyping until our paper prototype allowed users to complete our desired tasks. Iterative design is a very powerful tool that should be used in all design processes.
User Feedback
Users are at the center of the design, hence the term user-centered design. Therefore, it is important to gather user feedback between prototype iterations. User feedback can be an indicator of how well our design is implemented and allow them to discuss concerns or give comments on what is going well and what is not going well. We get to learn if our interface is intuitive, navigation is simple, and accomplishing a task is possible without additional assistance. Specific methods used to gather user feedback were: usability tests and heuristic evaluations. User feedback is where we learned a lot about what users wanted and how they wanted those functionalities to be implemented or considered. For example, some users recommended the following additions to our application after heuristic evaluations: enabling audio calls, creating distinct forms for the various types of users, creating submit/done buttons after modifying profiles, a way to change text fields, and back buttons. Yes, you read that right, back buttons. This was something we had not considered as designers and is one of those things we as users take for granted. In most of the applications we use we expect a back button to be on the interface, unless the phone itself has a back button like Android devices. User feedback is where any assumptions we made about design are uncovered. Our product not only needs to appeal to users but must be simple for them to use. It is good to constantly get user feedback because although we as designer may think we know what would be nice for a user to have, it is not always what they want. The usability tests are where we got the see our design put to the test. Without any explanation of design specifics, we ask a user to complete a task and observe what steps they take to do so. If they complete the task without a hitch, then we can be confident the design process is going well. Otherwise, we know where changes need to be made. Our usability tests led to important changes.
Upholding Ethics
Ethics is a very important topic increasing in popularity in the age of rapid technological development. Because our application stores and relies on personal information while offering audio and voice chat options, we got a lot of justified concern from users about privacy. Consider for example the tech giant, Facebook and recent concerns over privacy issues. There is growing concern from users on how privacy can be improved and protected against loopholes which expose personal information that users may not want their friends to see. Privacy controls in big apps such as Facebook are often not understood by most users due to their lengthy legal nature. Another ethical issue of concern is how data is interpreted or used. Take for example Machine Bias published by ProPublica. Essentially, some courts across the nation are using software to predict the risk levels of future crimes committed by convicted criminals to determine jail sentences or bail costs. Unfortunately, many of the software that are used are biased against black people. This is an example of personal information being used against someone’s knowledge to potentially get them imprisoned. For College Connect, we need to make sure all users are aware of their privacy rights and feel comfortable putting their information into the app. One way we are trying to make the user comfortable is by not making all fields mandatory. So, if they have certain information that they do not want to share and do not think is necessary in finding connections, they can opt out of entering that information. We also implemented confirmation features with audio and video chats so users are not getting random calls and forced to answer. Overall, the ethics of privacy and data storage is very important to our app because of its inherent reliance on private information.
Incorporating Accessibility
Before this class, I had not considered the various types of users with disabilities who use apps just as anyone else. Because we are targeting high school and college students, we will probably have a significant portion of users with a least one kind of disability that we should consider. After having done readings on ways to make applications more accessible, these were my thoughts on making College Connect more accessible: “One way we can make our project more accessible to a wider audience of users is to use good and simple color contrasts rather than bright contrasting colors for plain text and buttons (accessibility-2016-DosDonts-posters). This was an issue we ran into during a usability test; it was not clear to the user on which tab they were because the shading of buttons was not clear. This will also greatly help color-blind users understand what tab they are on and make reading text easier. We won’t rely on colors to convey meaning but will also include icons when necessary, with error messages, for example.” We want as many users as possible to take advantage of our application, but to make that possible, our application needs to be accessible to everyone.