Executive Summary
Our iPad app, Minimal, provides people with unique tools to help them better manage their organization and live a more minimalist lifestyle. In this project, we used a process called Lean UX. Lean UX is an essential tool in the Interaction Design field, it is so you create solutions for the user before you make the program. Some of the challenges we face include communication with each other on Discord and making sure we’re all on the same page. I would also say scheduling was a challenge it’s better to work on a project together so it’s hard to line up everyone’s schedule when some of us work full time to actually get work done and bounce off ideas each other.
The team consisted of four members who worked together for eight weeks during the Fall semester of 2022. Our prototype helps people in the process of learning the lifestyle of minimalism and making their process memorable and simple. I served as a UX Researcher and Designer on this project, assessing our participants' behavior in relation to our prototype. We interviewed several participants so we can better understand the user and fabricate something that fits their needs. Our class read the book Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden which covered the benefits of lean UX and the importance of teamwork. We used Figma and Discord to complete this project in an orderly and design-centered manner.
Meet The Team
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Nicole Braizer
Lead UX Designer/Researcher
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Jammal Lee
UX Designer/Researcher
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Kristen Morea
UX Designer/Researcher
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Marina Hernandez
UX Designer/Researcher
Introduction
All students in Interaction Design 2 did extensive research to create a prototype of a potential product. Initially everyone made an idea for a app and everyone voted for their favorite and least favorite apps to work on. Then we were set into teams to work on a project where we saw potential. Our team found that very few minimalist apps that help people better organize their lives such as: Get rid of it and Clutter-free. These apps specialize in either habit building or productivity but the user has to switch through different apps if they desire all those features. Our prototype, Minimal, is versatile and convenient because it consolidates these tools into one easy-to-use app.
In class, we studied Lean UX, which is a fascinating tool that helped up analyze and discover the best ways to utilize time and resources when creating a product. Lean UX comes from Jeff Gothelf who made the book Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams in 2013. Lean in UX essentially means it is a budget-friendly process while producing the most valuable product. In Lean UX, there is Scrum, this is where teams deliver their products efficiently and modify their content based on feedback. Our class studied Lean UX and applied the knowledge to our Interaction Design 2 class.
To create a prototype that would be successful, we did extensive usability research and testing to ensure the design catered to humans. By diving into the lives of real users, qualitative research produces rich and accurate details that lead to excellent design. For the rest of this document, I will go into detail about Sprint 1 and 2 which covered 6 weeks. This is where we made a product and tested it on participants and used that data to make a solution over the course of 4 weeks. Then finally I will end this document with a conclusion in which I will summarize all that I have learned from accomplishing this project.
Sprint 1
Sprint 1 was a 3-week process where we dove into the qualities our app would have and tested how the user will interact with our ideas.
Sprint Week 1
Our team transitioned from week zero to week 1 by creating a bare-boned layout of our MVP and embedding our declutter challenge into it. A 2-day standup is a chart in which we make a to-do chart and name everyone’s responsibilities for the prototype. We utilized affinity maps in this process by taking notes from the interviews we had and sorting those notes into common areas, and labeling that common area for the purpose of preparing for our next sprint. We tested assumptions by interviewing our participants and getting their feedback on what they liked and disliked about the experience. We created MVPs by using the data from the test and making a bare minimum product to test.
Design Week Zero
We modified Lean UX for this class by using our own work and creative mindset to create our solutions for each section. We went through these processes because they are necessary for the production of a successful product. These mini projects helped me learn the importance of a business mindstate, applying our company with regards to the user. They assisted us in the creation of the first project because we all laid out ideas in the open and bounced off each other as to which should be applied to the prototype.
First, we did Business Problem “Brainstorm-dot-voting”-style Exercise where we listed what our product should have as a business. Second we Metric Mountain this was mentioned in our book, it is a visual representation of a customer’s lifestyle when downloading a program, here is where we decided how a customer will be introduced to our program. Third we Proto-persona where we fabricated a persona or a common user and their daily activities that would engage in our program. Fourth we discussed User Outcomes & Benefits where we would list why a user would benefit from using our product. Fifth was creating design studio solutions where we were sketching out potential ideas for our app. We sketched out how it would look, where it would be located, and what features it should have.
For our research and testing, we asked people to complete a streak by sending us a text of an item they got rid of each day for a total of 3 days. If they were to complete the challenge we would give them a custom drawing of themself and ask if we could interview them about the process. During the interviews we asked questions along the lines of “What item(s) do you own the most of? (T-shirts, shoes, stuffed animals, etc) and ”Why do you keep things even if you do not use them?” We talked to friends and coworkers, and each one of the team members brought at least 1 of the participants to interview. We talked to them to discuss our questions so we can know the reason why people hoard items and to understand the common organization of their lifestyles. We learned that each participant is different from the other, but there is always a memorabilia that they keep that reminds them of a childhood moment or of a loved one. This knowledge shaped my assumptions by acknowledging that the participant does not have the same perspective as me and that our prototype should explain things clearly to the user rather than us exp[lain the concept to them. This helped us gain the skills to better prepare for our future sprints.
Sprint Week 2
Essentially the concept of the Retrospective is when you reflect on your previous sprint and comment on what went well and how you need to improve for next time.
What we learned in week 1 shaped what we completed in week 2. We learned a lot about the participant’s perspectives and how realistic our challenge was. We made sure that our next test would be ready for the user and to let them speak their mind.
Sprint 2
This 3 week sprint focuses on the finalization of the persona, design, and core experience of the prototype.
Design Week Zero
Revalidation in lean UX is going over the first sprint week zero and making sure after all the interviews and tests that the information we first added still applies to the project or if something needs top to be changed. The proto-persona is expected to be changed, but it is up to the team member if they want to change anything else. We decided to change our Product Backlog, Hypothesis Table, and Hypothesis Prioritization Canvas. I learned that these changes made our motivation more accurate to the user and helped us develop key features for our app.
Our proto persona has aged and now has a family. We found that based on our findings that people who are older had time to collect more items especially those with kids. So we made sure that our app is more receptive to middle-aged adults. The more kids they had the less time they had to look over the number of items they had to minimalize to what’s important to them. They are also more likely to be able to afford products to help them better organize.
Sprint Week 1
The process we went through here was different than sprint 1 because we applied the data we found from that sprint to this prototype. So our product better served the user in their needs and experience. We tested the assumption that users would prefer text to speech to save them effort on typing. We also assumed that our features will better suit the participants’ needs in the process of minimizing. A lot of the data we found from testing our MVP was that people did not like the text-to-speech, they thought it was too difficult and that the text-to-speech did not pick up their words correctly. Luckily they liked the design, so that was a start in the right direction.
Sprint Week 2
This week was different than sprint 1 because it was our last chance to collect data from the participants. We also completely abandoned our last design and made a more modern, dark-mode app. We also sketched out a map of what should be the flow of our prototype. At first, we assumed that the user will understand the progress tracker and a reward point spending page. That they would comprehend this without us explaining what each page functions as.
Our research/testing sessions were the most productive and valuable at this point, the feedback we received from our participants exceeded our expectations. We got feedback on the layout, functionality, and design.
Our third proto persona did not change much from our last one. Our proto persona Alex is now overwhelmed with the amount of stuff he owns. He is still a family man with kids and a bunch of items that he doesn’t have the time to organize.
Conclusion
My experience with this project in this class has honestly been incredible. I have learned crucial information which will be very beneficial to my career. Some of the challenges I faced were with communication and scheduling, some things were changed without the consent of others and we had trouble meeting off of school set times. We solved this by adding comments in Figma, writing our thoughts on solutions, and applying them to each problem through design and prototyping. Some of the issues we had without sprints are that the participants did not give much feedback, they would say something along the lines of “that looked great good job” and would not critique us. We did get a lot of helpful feedback, people explained to us their issues and confusions and we believed that the app should be clear to the user. We corrected an abundance of prototyping and design issues and kept testing our product till we can get as much satisfaction and clarity as possible.
Overall I have learned to keep it clear and simple. I have learned the importance of Lean UX and how to apply it to my future projects in order to save time and money in production. Teams should keep communication clear so we can be efficient while having some fun in creating a project.
