IUX/UI/Individual work
My role: Research, Research synthesis, Taskflow, Prototype
Instructor: Alex Chang and Scott Ichikawa
Timeline: 4 week project
Problem Statement
Weather is essential part of our daily life, it would make or ruin a day for us. Understanding weather is crucial to our daily routine as well. However, right now people are drawn in information about weather forecast app without any useful information that are useful to them.
My Solution
Pin point Weather is a new way to think about weather forecast and how weather information is presented. Its primary goal is making a customization weather forecast with detail information that are tailor to different users with a simple intuitive streamline interaction.
My Process
Research
Heuristic Research
To better understand contacts of weather app, we first look at different weather apps that are on the market, and analyze them based on Nielsen’s 10-point usability heuristics. We evaluate each app with how easy it is for user to control and does this app matches with user's mental model.
The Weather Channel
Weather
Weather Forcast
User Interview
In addition, to better understand a good user baseline, to further understand user mental model, I conducted a user interview with people who are constantly outside with habit of checking weather before they go out, use thinking out loud protocol to understand their process of checking weathers
Synthesis
During the interview, a thing that came up was that when using the app, sometimes the weather information are not accurate to local enough, particularly in big cities. Since the basic level was city but not borough. Giving more accurate information would be more helpful.
Unnecessary Information and Features
One of the most common pain point that came up during my user interview was the information was often not necessary. They often ignore most of the features and found them annoying to avoid also cluttered the interface.
Lack of Consistency In User Interface
There are different layout on the same interface when user enter the same page through different portals. This made some users more confused about the purpose of the page and found it harder to navigate.
Lack of Meaningful Way to Present Information
Many information provided by apps only were presented in numerical form, which resulting the data to be too abstract. Failing to provide visual or other familiar comparisons to user made otherwise useful information useless.
How might we create a streamline process to provide accurate weather information to user and present it in a meaningful way?
Concept Mapping + Task Flow
For this stage, We found two different model to be most appealing, and combining all of our findings on child learning. One of which is more complicated, with many different levels that would help us to keep children engaging. After we form our first concept, we decided to make something simpler and bare minimal, this model boils down to a task/collection system.
We decided to move-on with the simpler model, since it would be more intuitive for both children and parents, and still fit in all of our synthesis.
Wireframing + Iterations
One of the biggest struggle I had during this stage was how much information users really need and how accurate of information for them to be fully prepared. In the beginning, I still have too many extra information, and the way I presented it is still not enough, so based on the critics I got from my peers I double down on pin pointing the information, and give them an everyday index that everyone understands.
Another challenge I had was the time picker, I explored many different forms, but many of which does not matches with users' mental model. I made several different iterations.
Iteration 1
Iteration 2
User Feedback
Before working on high-fidelity prototypes, I wanted more test about my current conceptual model, and to see if it fits users' mental model. I finished all the basic interactions, and ask my participant to click-through the mid-fidelity prototype for more feedback.
During this interview, I actually found out that the clock in iteration 2, although works, but still are somewhat confusing. Also 24 hour system does not fit general user mental model.
Final Iteration
After my user testing, I made some final adjustment towards my time selecting interface and made sure it was more fitting to users' mental model and make it a more understandable interaction.
Hi-Fidelity Animations
After took notes and fix problems I have according to my user-testing, I start to work out high fidelity micro-interaction on Protopie.
Final Video
