During my Sophomore year at the University of Texas, I enrolled in my first two design thinking classes. In these courses, I experienced design thinking in a formal setting and practiced what I learned through tangible projects.
In my first design thinking class, our group tried to tackle the problem of bus security---the idea of being physically safe on a bus. After a few weeks of going through the design thinking stages we began prototyping. Our ideated prototype was a bus safety app that used Augmented Reality (AR) to draw other passengers to the user's location and provided an easy way to ask for help. We tested our prototype by roleplaying situations with previous interviewees. They were receptive to our initial scenarios, but we ended up not tackling the problem. This AR app didn’t provide any extra value in safety, it was just a novel idea that we had initially thought was cool. Therefore, we ended up pivoting to another idea.
With this project, I learned about digital prototyping with Figma. We chose Figma because it was a useful tool for collaboratively creating mockups of digital screens. It's also browser-based which led to less friction when making an account and beginning to prototype.
In the following semester, I worked on another UT Bus System related project. This time, our group wanted to tackle the pain point of being frustrated when waiting for a bus. Just like last time, after going through weeks of employing the empathize, define, and ideate methods of the Design Thinking process, we began prototyping. Instead of a digital prototype on Figma, we tried to be more low fidelity and practical due to the constraints of conflicting schedules and lack of time. We ideated a quiz game that users could interact with when waiting on their buses to arrive. To prototype this concept, we created a short quiz on PollEverywhere (a kahoot-like app for quick quizzes) and printed out a QR code on paper. We visited various bus stops and asked people to try out our waiting game at the bus stop. Because this was a low-fidelity prototype, we added context ourselves for our test subjects, leading people to enjoy the concept but not the prototype’s experience itself.
From these experiences, I learned that prototyping, even when involving two similar subject matters, can vary based on the type of solution and the time limitation, thus requiring many trade offs. On one hand, a digital prototyping tool like Figma allowed test subjects to visually experience screens, but failed to replicate the rest of the user experiences. On the other hand, a low-fidelity solution with a mix of digital and physical components was great for creating a quick and easy way to test out a concept, but lacked the means to deliver a full user experience.
Comments