The design process of WEELD by Erik Poromaa

We started of by getting to know our target group, tourists. This was done through many stages. We brainstormed allot of different ideas and we also contemplated about what we ourselves wanted when we travel abroad. [INTERACTION DESIGN (ID) p. 373]  Through this we decided to narrow our target group from tourist to young tourist, around the age of ourselves. We also realized that our perception of what was needed is not necessarily what our target group wants. [ID p. 335]

We did this because of several reasons. First we agreed that it is quite hard to find good nightlife if you don't know any local people. When reading tourist guide books or other similar sources you are often recommended to big commercial clubs that are flooded with other tourists. Not the types of clubs that the locals actually go to.

We also agreed upon that there was no available solution to our problem. We could have brainstormed more about why there is not a good available solution to this problem. We did a couple of think aloud analysis and state of art analysis on different types of tuorist information sources, nine in total. None of them seemed sufficient. [ID p. 256]

During this time we also did our interviews with some tourists, four in total. Our believes we confirmed, they had a pretty hard to find good nightlife. Tourist to Stockholm are often recommended to Cafe Opera, which on one hand isn't bad, but theres allot more to Stockholm nightlife. In this stage we could also had visited typical hostels for our target group to gather further information about them. But it seemed pretty clear that there was a service missing for party going tuorists. [ID p. 228]

We decided to make an app. Partly because pretty much every one has some type of smart phone now a days. At least everyone that has the opportunity to travel. It also goes in hand very well with out target group, young people often use there phones and are very familiar too using apps in their everyday life. [ID p. 265]

In this process we did a couple of personas and scenarios. This to further develop our idea in the right way and find the kind situations where our app comes in handy. [ID p.360, p. 415]

After this we did a couple of low fidelity prototypes. With every iteration in the design process our prototypes became more and more fine tuned to the users wants and needs. The iterations is something I really think was good with the course. It really showed that an idea can be developed in steps and that a design always can be improved upon. [ID p. 329, p. 342]  For example, in the beginning we had to many functions. Our design also became more and more consistent. [ID p. 28]

To the last presentation we started to make a high fidelity prototype. The first one was presented in class. Then when we won the class competition we made a whole new impretaion of our design, even more hi fidelity. The mixture between making both low fidelity prototypes and high fidelity was really educational. We got a sense of the pros and cons for both types. Our last app later won the price for best user interface design, something that we are really proud of.  [ID p. 396]

This is the design process in short, for a more detailed version please read the other blog entry's.

Source:

Yvonne Rogers; Helen Sharp; Jenny Preece . INTERACTION DESIGN: beyond human-computer interaction, 3rd Edition. (United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2011)