Week 06: Design Sprints

This week we went through some techniques and methods used in Design Sprints. We would then complete a design sprint of our own in teams.

The problem we were given was “Serious pressure on accident and emergency departments in UK?”

First we discussed some common issues when visiting a hospital, such as: feeling lost, conditions of waiting rooms, lack of consideration and information.

To get started on our design sprint we had to learn exactly what it is. A design sprint is a method of design thinking, used to solve complex problems in teams through rapid prototyping, and qualitative testing with targeted users.

Before beginning a design sprint, it is commonplace to complete a design audit. A design audit is a quality assurance activity, it’s goal is to review products and evaluate them from a UX perspective to ensure it meets accessibility, UI component continuity, and design unity requirements.

Some things that would take place in the design audit stage are:

  • Interviewing key stakeholders, people leading the project
  • Reviewing all existing documents
  • Reviewing all relevant user research
  • Reviewing the current designs
  • Identifying or reviewing core use cases
A design sprint is usually a 6 stage process:
  • Understand
  • Define
  • Ideation
  • Decide
  • Prototype
  • Validate

The Design Sprint

Stage 1- Understand

After getting into our teams of 3, we discussed and began to understand the brief given to us. We started with using the “How might we?” method. This method involves coming up with an angle around the problem starting with the question, ‘how might we?’

How Might We

We came up with the following questions for the problem, “Serious pressure on accident and emergency departments in UK?”,

  • How might we ease the pressure of staff in the hospitals?
  • How might we make the waiting process less stressful?
  • How might we help doctors be more efficient in consults?
  • How might we make emergency waiting rooms more efficient?

Empathy MappingĀ 

Empathy mapping is a process used to outline how a user might feel or think when going through the current problem. In a empathy map you typically would have 4 sections. One would be dedicated to what the user would say, another what they think, another what they feel and the last, what the user would do.

We were given 30 mins to complete this task.

The image above is of the empathy map we created. I think this was a useful exercise to really focus and imagine going through the problem from a users point of view.

User Journey Maps

Next was to create a user journey map. A user journey map is a more complex mapping exercise, detailing all the steps of the users journey through the problem.

This the map we created. I think this was a useful exercise and helped us outline what our user requirements should be and define what it is our app should do.


App Development

This week’s practice in design sprints helped me realise there is more I could do in the form of user research. I hadn’t made a user journey map before but I think it would be a very beneficial way to gain empathy for the user and create a sort of narrative flow to the product.
Therefore I decided to create my own journey app and try to gain insight into how I would imagine the user feels and does at every step.
This is how the journey map came out.
This was a very interesting process, It made me really think about the impression I want my app to have. It also made me think about what a future goal for this product could be. The idea of this product being common in the vet healthcare industry would be very rewarding as I know what difficulties and stress vets endure, on a personal level. Anything that can help the vets and the owers I think would be very useful and if I could create something like this I would be very proud of myself.
This week I had to create some mock ups for the screens I wireframed last week.
This is how the mock-ups slide came out.
I like the Heading and body copy together here. I also really like the layout I created in the profile screen. All the information is there for the user to pop in and out of. I think that having some information available for the user to see, before clicking into the icons, would be a better experience. Therefore I might create a widget to show the weight of the pet over time or the food and exercise they’ve had. Along with this there are some issues with the buttons and navbar being too big.
This is my slide deck complete and ready for critique.

 

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