PLEASE!: AN APP

Problem: Even though people are willing to share their possessions to save money and space, they feel that they need a previously established relationship in order to lend and receive items.

Solution: Please! is an app designed for people living in shared living spaces. The app is designed for the lender: the person that has bought a food processor and only uses it twice a year. The app is designed for the borrower: the person that always needs a new gadget but doesn’t want to break the bank to keep up with his or her needs. With a quick add feature, users can request an item and notify their community around them within minutes. Please! allows people to borrow items without having an established relationship with each individual. With a bright and simple interface, the app lends to easy navigation with five key tasks. Our target group includes people that are aware of sustainability and want to practice that on a smaller scale. The concept of sharing is a specific way that one can be sustainable in the home.

Focus: User Experience, User Interface, User Research

This was a collaborative project with Abby Gartner, Michaela Fallon, & Nicole Procter

PRESS PLAY: PLEASE! USER DEMONSTRATION

MY ROLE

During the research phase we all encouraged each other to break away from the typical "environmental sustainability" approach. I was interested in city living environments and that led to our focus on shared living spaces. A role I played within group discussion was a prompter. I would lead the group into completing new tasks. We all interviewed someone during the research phase. During the user testing phase we each found people to user test. When it came to the actual designing of the app we divided up the screens. We had slightly different ideas for the aesthetics and navigation of the app. I enjoyed the process of determining the best solution through a combination of our best ideas. That was our method throughout our project. We would share our ideas, sift through them, then come to conclusions. We based our decisions on practicality and usability, along with our persona.

REFLECTION

I enjoyed the research phase of the project where I go to learn more about sustainability. Becoming familiar with the topic is always one of my favorite parts of a project and this was not an exception.

Along with the topic, I begin to feel more comfortable with the user experience process. I had experience gathering research and using the data to develop personas and user scenarios. However, having time to delve into our hypothesis and find answers through interviews was valuable.

Our personas were then based off of real people we had met and interviewed. I believe that was one of the best parts of the project. We could constantly reflect on our target group to determine if the app was best suiting our persona’s needs.

USER EXPERIENCE PROCESS

Developed Hypothesis: "If a small community is given a common platform that facilitates secure connections, then they will be more inclined to live a lifestyle of sustainable sharing."
Decided Target Audience: "People living in apartments who are open to sharing and small-scale sustainability."
Completed Research, Interviews, and Surveying: Our research revealed that sharing is a form of small scale sustainability. We interviewed 3 people and had 70 responses to our online survey. The questions focused on neighbor relationships, existing sharing habits, and their idea of sustainability.
Defined The Problem: "Even though people are willing to share their items to save money and space, they feel that they need a previously established relationship to do so."
Ideation: We then analyzed our research. We developed a concept map, looked at existing sharing systems, formed user journey maps, and developed personas.
Lo-Fi Prototyping: We developed a Lo-fi prototype that carried the user through the main functions of the app.
User Testing: We tested the lo-fi prototype on people in our target audience. The “talk aloud” method was used as they performed two tasks. Through user testing we discovered both minor and major problems that we needed to address.
Hi-Fi: During the last stage of our project we focused on fine tuning the design and function of the app based on the user test results. We did guerrilla user testing with people as a final test run of our app.