User Persona Development – Tuesday 5th February 2019
As part of our project brief, we are required to present our research, findings and ideas to stakeholders Richard and Bella. In preparation this, we needed to clearly refine our user research to be more uninformed and easier to consume. The best way to do this was by developing user personas. This will also be greatly beneficial in the long run when the students from Graphic Design come on board because we will have a sturdier base for our ideas.
We started by brainstorming our ideas as a group on large sheets of paper using the S.W.O.T. (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) methodology. We based the personas on the users we have already interviewed, data we have collected from them and then we filled in the gaps. These were the results:
Parent & preschool child S.W.O.T. analysis
Parent & school child S.W.O.T. analysis
Weekend walker S.W.O.T. analysis
Dog walker S.W.O.T. analysis
Retired rambler S.W.O.T. analysis
I picked two personas to develop further and those were a dog walker and retired rambler. I began by writing a short paragraph for each.
Dog Walker
David is a 27-year-old man living in Beccles, Norfolk, with his girlfriend of 5 years and a dog called Harry. He is a GP at the local medical practice (use of computers and mobile tech) and his girlfriend works in a local coffee shop whilst studying an Open University course (online course means she is competent with technology). His routine is reasonably regimented, so he can only walk the dog before, after work or on his days off. He loves being out in the area because he is stuck inside a lot due to his line of work. He finishes early every Thursday and doesn’t work Saturday or Sunday so these are when he is out the most. He likes to visit familiar spots on Thursdays because of his busy mid-week schedule, but on the weekend can be found exploring new places anywhere from a 20 minute to an hours drive away. When he finds a new country spot, he likes to tell his girlfriend, who also likes to pass on the word in the coffee shop and also has a bit of a habit of sharing everything on social media.
Retired rambler
Geraldine is a 67-year-old female living alone in Lowestoft. She and her husband used to love going walking together, but he passed away a few years ago. She likes to keep walking because she has always enjoyed it as a way to stay social and active. She is part of an online collective who e-mails out time and locations for the group to meet so this is her main form of technological engagement. Once the e-mail has been sent, she researches the area and the weather so she knows what to expect. The group leader usually organises a mini-bus to get them there, so transport is not an issue. She never gets separated from the group, so doesn’t bring a phone with her, but likes to join in with the younger members who track their walks using various fitness/walking apps. She likes the idea of having an electronic guide, but it all looks so complicated. If this technology is so clever, why can’t it teach me to use it? There are always too many buttons. She wishes it were more simple and/or better explained.
These were very broad descriptions and needed to be more specific. I organised the content and formatted them for the presentation.
David’s finalised persona
Geraldine’s finalised persona
Information Architecture – Thursday 14th February 2019
As well as the slide show presentation, we will also be preparing our own high-fidelity prototypes based on improvements made from comments made at the interface design interview session. However, this it is to include the welcome screen from when the user scans the QR code. The integration of the global navigation service needed to be decided and agreed upon by all of us to consequently feed into the overall information architecture. By letting giving all of our experiences the same welcome experience, the user will feel more comfortable and familiar with the product with each use.
We began by writing the QR code scanning action, the landing page and three themes. We placed them in order or priority to then act out a scenario on our own phones. I find that pretending to complete the action helps me to think about what I would expect to happen. When this is compared to the user personas, I am able to see whether a user journey makes logical sense or not. We worked through the stages until we decided on this structure:
Information architecture of the mobile app
To make this easier to read, I created a digitalised version:
Digitalised information architecture
Some key findings were:
- The user should be greeted with a standard landing page, welcoming them to the experience. This could include a short introductory paragraph.
- The experience needs to include information about the Angles Way and their current location. This could be included on the landing page, be split across the landing page and a separate page or be displayed as additional screen overlays. This can be experimented with during high-fidelity prototyping.
- Contextual help will be provided to the user in the form of speech bubble type pop-ups to help them use the app properly. We are integrating technology (360 view) that could be new for some users so they will need to be taught how to utilise it.
- An [i] symbol could be included in the corner of each screen so users can read about their particular location at any time.
High-Fidelity Prototype – Friday 8th February 2019
For my high-fidelity prototype, I improved upon my paper interface design shown to the Women’s Institute. Although I designed my lo-fi prototype in XD, I switched to Axure to develop my idea further. I ran into my recurring problem of being able to make nice, pretty interfaces in XD, but Axure’s functionality capabilities give my work the interactivity required.
My coursemates and I all designed our prototypes together to tackle the issue of global vs. local navigation. After much deliberation, we came to the decision that we would apply the same global header and navigation in our prototypes so it is less confusing during testing. We experimented with the idea of keeping the same global branding but designing our own local branding, but when we put ourselves in the shoes of the stakeholders/users we realised this would be very confusing. We appreciated that we were building different experiences and if the interface keeps changing throughout, this can be very disorientating and confusing. Moreover, we kept the information architecture, landing pages and information screens the same as well.
I took on board the comments from our testing session and tried to make the experience more appealing towards adults. Testing showed that the first prototype may have suited better towards children in a learning centre. I got rid of the dial selector and turned options into simple, easy-to-use rectangular buttons. I incorporated dual-coding for a more aesthetically pleasing, naturally understandable experience.
I did away with the identifier functionality because I thought this would serve better on a desktop experience, incorporated with route planning, and replaced it with a virtual information board. I kept our user personas in mind and thought about how they have children and grandchildren. When trying to read an information board, it can be quite hard to keep children in one place if they want to run around. It could be useful to have this information on a portable platform. Even though we didn’t have the chance to interview a family-type user group, this ideology can also be applied to the older ladies we met in Beccles. They commented multiple times on the walk, about how they enjoyed having Richard there as a guide feeding them information. This gave me the idea of letting users scan the QR code and access the information board on their mobiles whilst walking around. Users will be able to choose the season and location they want to explore and will be shown some main plants/animals to look out for on their trip.
Along with developing the information functionality, I wanted to add something fun. I made a rough prototype of being able to let the user experience a 360view of a particular season. For example, if they are walking around Carlton Marsh in the Winter, they will be able to have an almost VR experience of what their surroundings would look like in the Summer.
During development, we thought it best to combine our ideas for the presentation. We were all presenting our findings together so to have both experiences available on one platform gave the stakeholders a more realistic idea of how the whole app experience would work. I designed some initial landing pages in Axure and my coursemate coded these into functioning web pages for mobile. This is another reason I used Axure, because of how easy it is to convert projects into HTML and CSS code. Once I had designed my prototype, I simply exported the code for my coursemate to integrate with his. By the end of the day, we had a fully functioning high-fidelity prototype accessible through scanning a QR code.
The live link to my Axure prototype can be found here. To access my work, select the “Ecology” section on the theme selection page. It is optimised for use on an iPhone 8 and looks very disjointed if viewed on desktop.
I have also produced a user journey for my prototype:
Hidden Habitats user journey
The information architecture for my mobile expereience is:
Hidden Habitats information architecture
Creating my prototype was not difficult to do but it would have been a lot easier with more qualitative (and even some quantitative) data. Basing an eight-screen mobile application on the opinions of three women who don’t regularly use technology was tough. As challenging as it is, that may be a demographic we have to cater for, so I happily accepted the challenge.
Reflection
Overall, I don’t think my idea on its own is gripping enough to actively bring people out to walk around the Broads. It lacks the drive and encouragement that our demographic of users need to go out into nature. I believe it is useful and has it’s place in the bigger picture but all experiences should be linked by one overarching concept. If the main aim is to collect tokens and these can be found in each of our interactive experiences, there is insentive, drive, and a slight element of competition.
The fact that our user groups have been few and small has massively impacted our findings. Normally, this would be easy to work around, but due to the breif outlining the service to be for “everyone”, I felt as though we were being asked to build Rome with a bucket and spade. It is really hard to come up with concepts to suit everyone but this can be tackled by linking them all together with one main idea.