Week 11

Studio class:
Just continued to refine all our touch points, making sure they are all cohesive and relevant to the user (using empathy). Also spent the remainder of the lesson pulling the dossier together, making sure to have all the relevant points laid out. Got some further feedback from the tutor in regards to our POV statement and central proposition. We had our initial ideas down but needed a few tweaking in some places to really get the statement flowing strong.

Week 10

We started this week off with an interim. We joined 2-3 groups from the other stream to exchange feedback. It was interesting to see everyone's ideas and how they are approaching the issue with their touch points. As our app is targeted especially for university students it was super helpful to see how the users interact with our product. In terms of our idea, they found it to be helpful for managing their university life however there were some sections where it wasn't working so they suggested ways we can alter it e.g. messaging systems for tutors and students. Although the messages are filtered for specific classes, tutors may still be bombarded with messages. So one of our users suggested to use our calendar function to show when tutors are free and the students could arrange a meeting with them face-to-face, this way they are collaborating in person. There was also an issue of readability and the size issues of things within the app. The second phase included all streams. It was more of a moment of seeing what others have done and to give and receive more feedback. It was interesting to see what stage everyone is at. I think this will help advance our project as we were able to test our app with our target audience to see what works and what doesn't.

For the second session, we had a lecture on 4th year courses and the hand in requirements for week 6. We then went back into our groups had continued to refine our idea. Over the course of the week we need to start working on our dossier and getting our ideas down in words. Through our prototyping and user testing we found that students have different needs. We need to give scenarios to show how they help different students using the 3 main functions of our app.

Week 9

There was a lecture on design thinking, linking back to empathy and understand your audience/users. The thing that I got out of the lecture is the importance of perspective and how your audience will be use or be affected by your product or service. This is something I need to remember when we refine our app, especially since our initial app design was quite busy. 

For the workshop we had to form a small team and find a solution for poverty from the perspective of a persona that they had created from their research. From the map, we decided to choose the issue of transport and how the persona struggles to carry her groceries from the supermarket and back to her house. It is also time consuming as it took about an hour each way. We came up with various solutions but the one we decided to present was a icecream-like food truck that goes to the bus stops everyday, and people will be able to purchase what they need without having to drive/or take the bus to the supermarket. The truck would have specials everyday e.g. meat, dairy, however they will always contain the necessity such as milk and bread. From this exercise, I learnt that all solutions does not need to be products but it can be a service to help with their issue. We have to look into the perspective of the user and see what suits the matter the best. Now we need to identify areas that we can improve by looking into our user perspectives - university students. 

For the second studio class we continued developing our ideas by doing more user testings. We manage to pitch our idea to tutors, students (our target audience) and some fourth years. They suggested that we really needed to work on how all touch points can be cohesive e.g. visuals, language, colours. So for the remainder of the class we tried to revise our topic a little more so we can have at least all of our touch points mocked up roughly for interim next week.