Add a Feature
due January 31, 2020
Setup
- Group Project
- 6 class days (plus the weekend!)
Materials
- Sketch
- Google Slides
- Principle
Background
As a new designer joining a team, you’ll often have to rapidly come up to speed on your product, your users, and quickly iterate on proposed solutions under tight timelines. Your other stakeholders will all have opinions, and you’ll have to get into the practice of supporting your claims and finding ways to incorporate new features into the existing platform.
Aspects to Consider
- Who are the users and what are their goals? How can you quickly learn about them? How does the assigned scenario fit into their day?
- What’s the hypothesis about how the new functionality will change their behaviors?
- How should the new functionality tie into the navigation of the product? You are expected to try variations.
- You must be able to defend your design decisions based on research and testing.
- The company already has an established aesthetic and defined look and feel. How will you maintain this in your hi-fidelity prototype?
Target Device
- Mobile App (Either iOS or Android)
Requirements
- User flows for the key new tasks the user needs complete
- Show how the feature fits into the app navigation
- Evaluate your design against heuristics and CRAP principles
- Digitized screens at high fidelity
- Create at least one key animation on Principle (you’re very welcome to do more!)
- Provide evidence for key decisions through research and testing
Timeline
- Submit Project Plan by Fri. 24 Jan. @ 5pm
- End-Of-Project Presentations will start Fri. 31 Jan. @ 9:30am
End-of-Project Presentation (6 minutes)
Your will have 6 minutes to summarize your work. We should get a strong sense of:
- The problem and the user(s)
- Findings from research and how these informed your design
- Your design, including a prototype
- At least one key animation on Principle
- Next steps
Suggested Roadmap
Friday
- Make a project plan
- Define user research methods (surveys, interviews…) and execute
Weekend
- Continue research
- Benchmarking
Monday
- Heuristics & CRAP
- Define problem and user
- Define new user flow with added feature
- Paper prototype
- Test & iterate
Tuesday
- Sketch mid-fi
- Test & iterate
Wednesday
- Test & iterate
- Principle animations
- Interactive prototype
- Rehearse presentation
Thursday
- Sketch high-fi
- Test & iterate
- Prepare presentation and rehearse
Friday
- Presentation in the morning
Design Thinking
Remember that design challenges are tackled by alternating divergent and convergent thinking modes. You are expected to conduct exploratory research and narrow down the scope of the problem within the realm of the proposed feature. Then generate multiple possible solutions. Evaluate. Test. Repeat. You’ll have the opportunity to show these iterations in the report.
Tips
- Devise a plan of attack
- Timebox your work
- Get feedback early & often
- Iterate
- Perfect is the enemy of good
- Document your work and add it to your individual folder on the Google Drive
- Build out your presentation deck and your report as you go
- Work fast; have fun