Meet the Team!
Executive Summary
For my senior capstone class, my group and I went through the Goal-Directed Design process to create a prototype for an Atlanta art guide. Our art guide utilized Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to encourage users to have a deeper discussion about art. We decided to create a zine, which is a scaled down version of a magazine, and a website prototype for our final product.
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Goals:
- Users gain better understanding of art scene
- Find in real life art inspiration
- Connect with artists
- Users view art at their own pace
- Users find art spaces where they feel comfortable
- Explore art
- Discuss art without seeming pretentious
Introduction
In my senior Capstone course, our main goal of the semester was to create a project we would present at a showcase held at the end of the semester. We began this project by first picking a topic. Every student proposed an idea, and based on responses from other classmates, we formed our own groups. My team member and group leader, Tatiana Bell, presented the idea of creating a local art guide that is centered around VTS. Once we formed our group, we decided on the name Atlanta Art Guide.
We completed our project using the Goal-Directed Design process. Goal-Directed Design is a process designers undergo in order to gain a better understanding of users and their goals. This process allows designers to research the domain of their product, its users, and learn how to create a product that allows users to easily achieve their goals. The following information will explain the design process in detail broken into five main categories: Research, Requirements, Modeling, Frameworks, Refinement, and a conclusion.
We completed our project using the Goal-Directed Design process. Goal-Directed Design is a process designers undergo in order to gain a better understanding of users and their goals. This process allows designers to research the domain of their product, its users, and learn how to create a product that allows users to easily achieve their goals. The following information will explain the design process in detail broken into five main categories: Research, Requirements, Modeling, Frameworks, Refinement, and a conclusion.
Research Phase
In the Research Phase of Goal-Directed Design, my team and I took various steps to acquire the information we needed to create a final product that would help users successfully utitilize VTS. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of our communication was through Discord, Miro, and Microsoft Teams. Discord was our main source of communication. We used Miro to place all of our work in, and Microsoft Teams was used for team meetings. This phase of Goal-Directed Design is important because it helps us understand our problem at hand. To start off our Research Phase, we completed Kickoff Meeting worksheets.
I completed the literature review portion of the Research Phase. A literature review is where related documents are reviewed in order to gain more information on the product at hand - in our case, I reviewed other documents related to art guides in general as well as the current art guides Atlanta offers. Literature reviews provide a foundation for user questions we would later develop.
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Following our literature review, my teammates completed a competitive analysis. A competitive analysis is where we look at competitors in our market to see what they offer, and what they are lacking. This helps us establish what basics our users will expect, as well as what unique details we will need to add to our prototype that will make us stand out against our competitiors.
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Affinity Mapping
Based on the research we conducted thus far, we created an affinity map to document all the ideas we had up until this point. Affinity mapping is a process where each member writes their ideas regarding user goals, product details, key features, and anything of that sort on a sticky note, and places them on a whiteboard. Once everyone has placed all their sticky notes on the board, we grouped them according to similarities. The point of affinity mapping is to get everyone's ideas on the table and determine where there is overlap. This helps the design process because it presents everyone's ideas and allows us to decide on what details we should keep in mind when moving forward with our final product.
User Interviews
Our next step was to organize our user interviews. Based on the research we acquired, each team member drafted a few user interview questions. When we all created our questions, our team leader, Tatianna, combined and condensed them. We established an interview plan as far as who our audience is, what our users' goals are, and what roles each of us would plan in interviews. We applied for IRB approval to conduct interviews in the beginning of the semester, but due to COVID-19, approval had taken longer than expected. Due to the delay, our class had to interview one another for user interviews. We each recruited at least one person from class for an interview and began our interview process.
Due to COVID-19, we held all of our interviews on Microsoft Teams. After each interview, we all placed our interview notes onto our Miro board.
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Modeling
Based on the information we acquired in the Research Phase, my team and I were able to move onto creating our persona. A persona is description of a hypothetical character that represents our users based on the research we conducted. Creating a persona helps us in the design process because we can design according to what our persona needs and expects. Having a persona and naming them also makes the process more personal because we are basically imaging this hypothetical user interacting with our product. This allows us the be more attentive to details when designing our prototype based off of our persona's goals.
Requirements
In the Requirements Phase, we decided exactly what would go into our final design according to how our persona needs to accomplish their goals. This phase of the Goal-Directed Design process does not necessarily focus on features or attributes, but rather what our product needs to be able to accomplish according to user needs. We began by specifiying a problem statement. We addressed the current state of Atlanta art guides, what they currently focus on, what they fail to address, and how our product will address what they failed to. We answered these questions in the kickoff meeting worksheet we completed earlier. So now, we were able to revisit them and add more details based on the research we acquired. We broke down our answers individually so we could highlight the important details of what we believed was most important to address. We did this using sticky notes in our Miro board. Then, we placed comments on which aspects of our answers that we believed should be in the final problem statement. Based on our votes/comments, we agreed on a final statement that is displayed in the yellow text box.
White = Tatiana Red = Me, Celine Green = Alliyah Yellow = Lorena Blue = Mia
We followed the same process for our vision statement:
Once we established our requirements, we divided tasks for each group member to work on in the prototype.
Frameworks
In the Frameworks Phase of Goal-Directed Design, we began to draft what our final product would look like. We decided to use Figma to create our wireframe. A wireframe is low-fidelity sketch of what the final product will look like. We used the research we gathered to establish what our product would look like. We kept in mind users' goals and how we can create a product they could easily navigate through to accomplish said goals. Wireframeing helps the design process because it is essentially a rough sketch of what we want our final product to look like. It provides a foundation that will make it easier to develop our prototype later in the process. Below is the layout of visual requirements we established for our prototype.
Below is the low-fidelity wireframe I created in Miro that we would later devlop into a high-fidelity prototype.
High-fidelity prototype:
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Usability Testing
Since we did not receive our IRB approval in time for usability testing, we conducted our tests with our classmates like we did with user tests. Usability tests evaluate our product according to how users interact with it. We chose to follow the Think Aloud Protocol and A/B testing. The Think Aloud Protocol is where we have our users go through our prototype and openly express their thought process. This helps us literally get inside the mind of our users. This allows us to reflect on our design decisions and make corrections accordingly. A/B testing is where we test two versions of our product. Our team leader, Tatiana, used the format of her portfolio as one version, and our prototype as the other version. The following is the results we gathered from our usability tests.
Refinement
In the Refinements Phase, we took the information we gathered from our usability tests and made the adequate changes according to what our users need. This phase is important because it is direct information from users that tell us what they expect from our product. It is important to set aside what we, as designers, want to put in our product, but rather putting the users' goals first.
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Conclusion
This semester long project further gave me the experience I need to enter the job market. This is my second time following the Goal-Directed Design process and i definitely felt more confident this time around. This was also the second time I went through the Goal-Directed Design process virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this semester was slightly different from the past, since our Senior Capstone class was hybrid - so we did meet in the classroom twice a week. I love collaborating with others on projects and this process further taught me the act of understanding and combing ideas/visions with others.
One thing I would change is the design decision process. We were all open to one another's ideas and were comfortable sharing, which I absolutely admire, but at times it felt like we were trying to implement too many ideas at once. Next time, I think it would be beneficial to present our ideas regarding specific design aspects, and then voting on which one to implement. Not pinpopinting which ideas we want to move forward with resulted in some areas of the prototype not being completed, and eventually being deleted from the final product. By explicitly voting on design decisions in the beginning, we can have a more narrow focus during the design process. I appreciate the lessions I learn from every group project and take advantage of it to improve myself for future projects.
One thing I would change is the design decision process. We were all open to one another's ideas and were comfortable sharing, which I absolutely admire, but at times it felt like we were trying to implement too many ideas at once. Next time, I think it would be beneficial to present our ideas regarding specific design aspects, and then voting on which one to implement. Not pinpopinting which ideas we want to move forward with resulted in some areas of the prototype not being completed, and eventually being deleted from the final product. By explicitly voting on design decisions in the beginning, we can have a more narrow focus during the design process. I appreciate the lessions I learn from every group project and take advantage of it to improve myself for future projects.