I was tasked with creating an app concept. I chose to go for a social need. I came up with an idea that how to deal with accessibility in the city for those with disabilities. Accessibility is important part of designing for users. People with disabilities often have problems getting around the city, so I wanted to create something that made it easier to get around the city. This started as a 3 day concept piece that would end with paper prototypes, and iteration done from usability testing on those paper prototypes, and presenting my project idea. I have since then been working on creating digital wireframes, so I can work with a developer to go live with this app. I will continue to test and iterate this idea and app.
2 Week Concept Project
Used these processes
➤ User Interviews
➤ Card Sort
➤ User Flow
➤ Storyboarding
➤ Sketches
➤ Paper Prototypes
➤ Wireframes
➤ High Fidelity Prototype
Used these tools
➤ Good ol' Paper and Pen
➤ Notecards
➤ Post-Its
➤ Adobe Xd
➤ Adobe Illustrator
User Research
Problem Statement & Hypothesis
People with disabilities need a way to know accessible ways to get around, because it can be difficult to travel around the city by sidewalk.
I believe that by creating accessible routes to destinations, for people with disabilities we will achieve safer and more accessible streets. We will know this to be true when users have left feedback on safe and unsafe routes, and rate their routes from the app positive.
Interviews
Interviews were a big part of deciding my designs. I was looking for qualitative data from these interviews. I wanted to know what professionals and people who deal with or have disabilities had to say, so my designs would be solutions that reflected their problems. I interviewed 5 different people. All had experience dealing with disability, physical and developmental. One was a nurse that worked with people with disabilities. The 4 others had friends and/or family that have disabilities, included one who was the main caretaker of someone. Full data can be found here. (COMING SOON)
Synthesis
I found good data to support idea that people with disabilities had trouble getting around on the sidewalks due to obstructions or obstacles. However…I also found that most users believed there wasn’t enough help through agencies (ie. ADA) or enough information for not only those with disabilities, but those who work with and care for those with disabilities. This led to coming up with more solutions having to deal with agency info and info for help.
Interaction Design
User Flow
There was a lot of emphasis on the IA of the redesign. One of the major pain points of the current website was bad navigation, especially the amount of categories, and how they labeled their search filters. In order to create a better experience, the IA needed a lot of work.
Storyboard
I created a storyboard to show how a user would go through my user flow. This also allowed me to make decisions on making the correct screens and features. This storyboard shows how someone in a wheelchair would use the the app to get a route to the store, while viewing obstacles on the sidewalk.
Sketches and Paper Prototypes
I started out by sketching some UI ideas based on my user flows and storyboard. I knew I would need certain screens within a route input feature, and easy places to get other information like Saved Screens, Agency Info, and obstruction info. My sketches were wireframes that I would base my paper prototypes off of.
From sketches I made all the screens I would need for a user to complete their task, based on the flow the user would follow. I made screens for making a route, including ones with a keyboard, made screens for Saved Routes, and made screens for adding trip reviews and obstacles on routes.
Usability Testing
made a scenario I would use for usability testing. I used my finding to help make iterations to my paper prototypes. Here is the scenario for paper prototypes: “You, as someone in a wheelchair, wants to know the easiest way to get to the store you have never been to, while avoiding any obstacles along the way. You would like to know info about the route as well. Upon finishing your trip, you would like to leave feedback.”
After the usability testing and paper prototypes were done with for the 3 day design sprint, I presented my findings to my peers. I focused on explaining how I used my research, especially through my interviews, to make my user interface decisions. Because this was a design sprint, I was not able to fully finish my interaction design. I got generally positive feedback, so I knew I wanted to continue along with this design and go further along with it. I decided to take the paper prototypes and make them digital, which I did on Adobe Xd.
Next stop…
Taking my concept and turning it into something real.
I used Adobe Xd to make digital clickable prototypes in medium to high fidelity. The transitions animations in Xd allow to acurately portray my interactions between screens (i.e. the transition from the address input to showing the route). Along with using the prototyping features in Xd, I plan to make more screens for more features in the future, and would like to do some usability testing and iterations in the future. As of now, I have prototyped three different user flows As this was a concept piece, I would like to work with a developer and make this a live project
