Check out our team’s final design report here




The Prompt:

It is a rare and lucky designer who gets to start a design from scratch. In this project, we’ll take a current application and use visual design and insights from testing to make it better. “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien” – Voltaire.

Part 1: Evaluate:  Do usability testing on our project and two competitors. What is wrong with the current system? Is there a better way to do the job they are setting out to do? Bonus: interview the creators.

Part 2: Ideate: Come up with multiple “hypotheses” about better designs, including a Dark Horse: an idea so crazy no one thinks it will work.

Part 3: Iterate:  Use heuristics and critique to bring this final design to an exquisite perfect. Or at least make it pretty darn good. First, you’ll make a medium fidelity prototype, using software such as InVision or Marvel. Add your new brand look and feel to this prototype! Then run another usability test with 5-8 people to make sure you’ve improved things. See RITE method to quickly evolve our leading contenders.

Part 4: Elevate: Take a polish pass to make sure the new version is as beautiful as it is usable.

Skills involved:

User Research: Usability Study & RITE uncovers nontrivial insights and leads to significant improvement.

Create Solutions: Design represents a creative, effective resolution of problems.

Execution: Design has high polish: easy to use and easy on the eyes.