Ripple

Date Aug 2018 - Sep 2018

Roles Interviews, Design, User Testing

Tools Adobe XD

Team Franklin Moairo, Niki Tran, Madisen Lin, Youngmin Kim

Our theme in Usability and Info Architecture was simple, design an app targeted towards an older demographic, fifty years and up. Depression is a common theme in young adults, but we knew that this was a common phenomenon in our demographic as well.

Our challenge was to find a way to tackle old age depression, and make sure that our target audience would be able to use our app.

Research

Our stakeholders were clear: an older demographic who may suffer from depression. Our research was primarily done through interviews and observations. We quickly realized that as people fall into a rhythm, they struggle to find new interests.

We began brainstorming by creating personas based off of our findings to narrow down a specific concept.

Retired Jim is looking for the next phase in his life

We all agreed that some common problems seemed to be loneliness and boredom caused by sudden increase in free time due to retirement. During our brainstorming session, I had the slightly morbid take of creating a bucket list app. We quickly rallied around the bucket.

I knew I wanted the bucket list, but threw out some more ideas such as a buddy system to check off your list with a stranger. I was definitely influenced by the popularity of dating apps.

Eventually, we refined the idea to create an event/activity finding app, with a specific twist in the UI that would be easier to use for those who are less tech-savvy.

This hit close to home, as I have two parents who can't keep up with rapidly changing UX practices. Iphones often have features that don't stay on the screen, but has you swiping around to reveal features.

While this may be intuitive for those who interact with electronics a lot, older generations are used to having everything in front of them. We decided to keep the navigation on the screen at all times to help the users figure out how to use our app.

The user flow

User Testing

Once we had a rough prototype going on Adobe XD, it was time to put it to the test. Groups would go around and test each other's prototypes.

During this time, we realized our fonts were far too small for our target demographic. We also received feedback that some wordings may be unclear to those who didn't use their phones as often.

Our classmates gave us the idea to clear up wording for those unfamiliar with technical terms. The extra set of eyes were really helpful.

It was very helpful to not only receive feedback, but also to go around and test other group's prototypes, as it gave us further perspective on what we could and couldn't do.

We learned from testing another group that our icons, while they fit the theme, may come off vague to users. Going back to our decision to keep everything on the screen, we decided to leave a caption for each image in the navbar.

Final Design

This is the bucket list. It effectively acts as your profile. In true bucket list fashion, you can check off items that you have completed.

Completed items do not disappear, seeing a list of complete items give users a sense of accomplishment, much like achievements.

The navigation bar is fixed, so users can always know how to get to the next page.

If the bucket list is to act as your profile, you would need to be able to edit your information.

We used iOS icons and mimicked the interactions to work the way it would on any iPhone.

Reflections

The most common problem to solve in design is interface related as technology becomes an even bigger part of our daily lives. We are quite literally a part of a whole new world from the one our parents grew up in.

Bridging this gap means getting creative with the design. Rather than strictly following the heuristics we are taught in class, to bend them to fit the user's needs. I feel that this is what separates our concept to an app such as Eventbrite.

As part of the class, we filmed a quick commercial on our app as well. Please enjoy my commercial debut!