IXD303

I read an article called “Tomorrow’s Narrative.”

The tomorrow’s narrative is a technique commonly used when brainstorming ideas for a specific project. When using this technique, it’s important to think outside the box and be as creative and innovative as possible in writing.

Tomorrow’s narrative is based on the idea of writing fictional articles that replicate the moment in which a product or service will be launched in the market. Consider how this service will be introduced to potential users. What values and features will be highlighted? Who is going to talk about it?

Writing and sharing articles with the project team during the ideation phase can help you explore different possibilities.

This article here can be replaced with a video or any everything to help communicate the project in the moment to the potential users.

Reflection

I feel this is an interesting technique I can use when during the early stages of my project. I may consider using this.

These empathy map were designed to get a better understanding of my users in what they think, does, sees and feels when using an app. By doing this I can tailor my product to suit the users needs. This App will benefit the patients and carers in order to help them provide better health care.

I now know what the user may be feeling when using a product before using my app and how I can ease their worries. I will make sure their process is easy and user friendly.

I hope by doing this I can make a app that reaches everyone’s needs.

PDF Empathy Maps:

Lorraine- Empathy Map

May- Empathy map

User Personas

I created three different user persona’s, based on my user research from three indiviuals that would benefit from a health care app.

I asked them their interests, influences, goals, motivations, pain points/frustrations, needs/expections from the app.

The First Person I asked was the carer.

Carer User persona

The carer wants to carry out their duties with the service user and is able to input information quickly and efficently so they can spend more time with the service user rather than taking ages using the app.

2. The Family Member

Annette

Following my research on the family member, Annette was looking for an app that was quick and easy to use. This means she could give feedback to the other family members on her mothers care.

3. Elderly Service User

Eldery Persona Mary

The elderly woman wants the best quality health care provided by the carers. This app can help them.

Reflection

I think this research gathered we help me design an app that would cater to all 3 of the users needs and meet their expectations and goals.

During my developing and planning phase of my health care app I designed a User Journey Map, Site Map and empathy Map.

User Journey Map

The User Journey Map talks about the different stages of user’s journey currently and while using my app. I explained about the actions, questions, pain points and opportunities of each of their users.

So I spoke about their current suitation at the moment before they needed the app. I broke down the different steps the user takes when caring for their patients. I thought their was an opportunity to improve the users experience by creating a user friendly app for the carers to help and care for patients/clients.

I looked at different suitations, possible questions and opportunities I could come up to help with planning idea’s for my app.

By doing this user Journey Map was able to discover things such as their happy moments and pain points. This allowed me to find out things the users likes and things I should include and try to avoid when creating my app. For example if the app was inaccture then user wouldn’t be interested in using it.

User Flow Map

Site Map

I first designed my sitemap on paper then developed it my figma. This is basically the breakdown of steps what the user will do to potenitally use this app efficently.

When designing my app it’s very important I make the process is and consider their needs. By doing this, I have clearer image in my mind of what the user will do when on my app. I started off by downloading the app, then go to sign up then login in and so on.

Component 1

Reflection

Once I completed this, I feel I have a much better understanding of the users which will help when designing my app. I discovered thing’s about the user and what I could do make my app as useful as possible

Todays class was a group crtique/ presentation. Each of us had a brief opportunity to talk about our work to class by showing the presentation slides. We also recieved some critical and helpful feedback.

From the feedback I received I have a good bit of work to do to improve my design.

Below is a screenshot of the feedback recieved from the class:

Reflection

I think the class thought my concept for my healthcare app was good but maybe i could work on body copy and content. I must make sure everything is aligned and stuctured apporitately. The user persona’s were good but make them more clearly and add a real life person. I thought this feedback was very useful and hopefully help improve my overall app and design. I’m really pleased Paul liked my idea. Obviously there is bits and pieces I need to improve and brush up on but I’m confident I’ll get there.

Today in class we looked at the technique called the “Design Sprint” which was based on Google’s method in UX design to practice design leadership in a team. It is used to solve problems when developing ouur design,prototyping and test out our ideas with users.

Design Sprints are a process which happens over 5 days. But today we were asked to complete it in a day.

The Problem

Too much pressures in hopsitals. How many we ease the pressures on E&A Department in Hopsitals.

I worked with Matthew, Florence and Cormac to come up with a digital soloution to this problem. We were asked to follow 6 point stages in order to pitch a product.

1. Understand- Who are the users and needs?

During this stage we wrote down a list of “How might” or How can” we questions. Then we catergorised them together and selected the best post it and go with that idea.

2. Define

3. Ideation- Brainstorm Ideas

4. Decide- What is the best idea?

5. Prototype- Design One

6. Validate- Testing

Reflection

I thought this was a fun task to do as a group. It got us to think outside the box and got us working together as a team to come up with a solution. I really enjoyed it and it was nice to have a change from the usual lectures on Thursday. I felt our group worked well and in the end came up with a good idea which I could see it being produced to ease stress and anxious in the waiting rooms and hosptials.

This we looked at another Ux Law called “Peak End Rule”. This rule is a cognitive bias thats impacts how people remember past events. “People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.”

When creating a design or movie pay attention to the users interest and how they will react at each stage of the process. Leave the user on a positive experience which will create a lasting effect. Work out when the product or service was used to eneterain the users.

This Law orgined in 1993 following a study by Kahneman, Fredrickson, Charles Schreiber and Donald Rederlmeir to help they gather evidence for the peak-end rule.

Example

They put this to the test by getting participiants do different trials were they sumergered their hand in 14 c of water for 60s. Then followed by the other 60s, keeping their hand submerged futher 30 s during which the temerpature was raisen to 15c. They were then asked which trial they were perfer to do again. Both were in favour of the 2nd test as it was in recent memory.

Reflection

When designing my website it’s important to interest users and get them to test the usbalitiy in order to improve.

Today’s topic in class was on content design.

Pre-content

Before we went over our content. Paul spoke said we will have a group critque session in Week 7 on our prototype health care Apps. For Wednesday the 9th of March he wants us to have the following content on a slide deck:

• Brand Name/Logo
• User Persona
• Brand Guideline
• Wireframe
• Prototype
• Three Screen Demo

These will be saved and named appriotately and emailed to Paul.

He showed us some interesting examples of the content from previous students work as a guideline for what we have to produce.

The brand Guidelines include:

• Fonts
• Colours
• Icons
• Buttons
• Typography

Paul Recommended us to use Material.io for further research and guidiance.

So now the main content

1. Everything is Content

Content Underpins Everything.

There are increasing number of roles out there in world which focus mainly on looking at content such as:

• Content Designer
• Content Strategist
• Copywriter
• Editor
• Publisher

Users depend on copy to interact with Apps and other products. It’s the designers job to make sure this content is written correctly and makes it easy for users to understand in order for the product/app to be successful.

Content Forms

Text- 95% of information on the web is written language. So the type of typography you use is essential in order for the user to use your site and be interested. Before adding content to your website, test out the typography by writing out content and choosing different fonts to see which works well. It’s easier to work with live text over lospem.

Words play a very important part of the design process when working on any product.

A vs B Testing

This can be done by looking two different types of content or strategies to see which one works best for you to gather the information.

We breifly looked at digital Service Standard and Sarah Winters.

According to the Goverment Digital Service the 10 standards of design are:

1. Design starts with the needs of user.
2. Do Less. Anything you produce replicate that.
3. Design with data.
4. Do the hard work to make sure it’s simple
5. Itreate. Iterate again before you are happy.
6. Build for Inclusion. Make sure it is accessibly to all users and their needs.
7. Understand the context.
8. Build Digital Services, not websites. Services are there to help people.
9. Be Consistent, not uniform. Keep all your content consistent throughout.
10. Make things open, make thing better. At the end always share your ideas for feedback.

Laws of Ux

We covered another law of ux called “Peak- end Rule”. This states that “People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and its end.

Example of this being a Survey.

Key points to consider:

• Pay close attention to the most intense points

A good book to look at is Thinking, fast and low by Nobel Prize Winnter Daniel Kanneman

Congnitive Biased

Uber good example of Cognitive Biased

2. Journey Mapping

A journey Map is a visual process the user goes through when using an app. A customer Journey Map is a map the customer goes through when purchasing a product,

We should start create different user persona’s being get into the mind set of the user. Once you gave that create an empathy maps. The next stage is then:

Developing your Journey Map

• Start with an idea of what your soloution is.
• Start by writing 1-2 word headline.
• Write down other words
• Break down the content simply

3. Touchpoints

A Touchpoint is were the user interacts with a product or services. A touchpoint can be button on a website/app a poteintal customer or user can click on to contact.

Consider where do you do and how do you get there.

We then discussed as a class the Touchpoints for Amazon, McDonalds and Ulster Univeristy.

Paul then give us 10 minutes to list as many Touchpoints for our own products.

I came up with the following:

• App
• Phone
• Brand/Monogram
• Email
• Call Number
• Button
• Web
• Photo
• Word of mouth
• People

Examples of further Resource-

• Gel by the BBC. This explains the breakdown of Typography. Choosing the Appiorate typeface is important. Focus on sketching and planning.
• Mailchimp

Reading habits have changed. More people read online articles rather than books. Paul recommended us to look at the article called “How Users read content on the web?” by Nielsen Norman Group to help us understand their approach.

Reasons for change

• Level of Motivation
• Type of task
• Level of focus
• Personal Characterists

How was can improve this?

• Use clear, noticable headings and subheadings.
• Place infromation up front
• Format Techniques
• Use Simple lanaguge for users to understand

Limations

• poor lighting
• Small text
• not interesting
• too many words

Users Seek..

• Trust in the source of content
• Brevity of content
• Retrieval

Call to Action

• Imagery
• Videos
• Data
• Icons

Designer- Brendan Dawes

3. Brand Dictonary

This week Paul asked us to write our own Brand Dictonary

4. Trialbrazers

• Hiut Deniam Co
• Mail Chimp

TLDR

Inspritation 

Content Delivery by Sarah Richards

Readable Guidlines

Next Week think about about user stories. Write up a few user stories for the following:

• As a user/role/who
• I want to task/action/what
• So that objective

As well I will write a Point of view statement to understand the need and reason for the user.

Lastly make designing content to consider all content of the web weather it be web or images or data, etc.

Reflection

Millers Law is another Law used in the field of Ux design. Miller’s Law states that “The Number of objects an average person can hold in their working memory is about seven.” This is known as The magical Number Seven. Therefore if your users need to make a choice, it’s important not to give them too many choices.

Basically in order for the user to understanding the content, it’s important to break it down into chunks.

This Law was published in 1956 by Professor George Miller when he discovered the theory, were he tested users to see how much memory memory they could hold.

It’s important when designing my content to make sure I break down the information into mangeable chunks to help users process, understand and memorise information easily.

Short term memory captaicity will vary depending on the user.

In week 3 Paul asked us to get into groups and using the data he provided to complete a mediical form in a clear and apporitate way.

I worked with Florence and Cormac to complete this task efficently. We dicussed ideas how we would breakdown this task evenly. We started off writing the data out on sticky notes and determined the structure of our form. We put the most important information to the top.

Once we were happy were the data would be going on the form, we went onto to figma to begin creating this form. We made sure our designs were consistent throughout. We choose an appriotate font type and colour scheme.

We finished working on the form in our sparetime. Once we were happy we came together and finalised our form.

I’m happy with the final outcome. In the future we could possibly add more options or leave out information that isn’t nesscary to the user.

The benefit of having an online form compared to written one is you have more options to choose from and more space to type your answer.

Below is how our form looks like on screen.

Form IXD303

Reflection

I enjoyed working on this task with Cormac and Florence as I felt we worked well together. Hopefull we can work on future projects or tasks together. I felt be doing this it was good practice when producing our own app when we take our own data into figma and stuctuely create our prototype.