Team:Concordia-Montreal/Design
AstroYeast.
Design Thinking
We applied a human-centered approach to design AstroBio.
Introduction
Design Thinking
Design thinking can be thought of as non-linear, iterative process that allows a software development team to understand users, define problems, and come up with innovative solutions to a problem (Interaction Design Foundation, 2020). The process itself involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. These stages are not sequential, meaning that they can be implemented in parallel, and they can be repeated as many times as needed.
Empathize
The first stage of the Design Thinking process is Empathize. The goal is to gain an empathic understanding of the users you are designing for and the problem at hand. It involves observing, engaging, and conversing with the people you are designing for.
Why is Empathy so important?
Empathy is crucial to any human-centered design process. In the case of AstroBio, it allowed designers and software developers to put aside their assumptions and to gain the best possible understanding of users, their needs, and their problems.
User Interviews
There are many different approaches that can be used to empathize with users from creating journey maps to asking what-how-why when it comes to their needs. We opted to conduct user interview for this stage of the process.
We asked questions, recorded responses from stakeholders to collect data to build User Personas, examine the user experience, and assess the usability of AstroBio.
To find the list of all the stakeholders we consulted with, refer to the Human Practices section of the wiki.
Define
During the Define stage, all the information gathered during the Empathize phase was used to define the core problems faced by users. We developed User Personas based on our research about potential AstroBio users. The goal was to understand the scenarios in which users found themselves in when carrying out their work.
User Personas
Personas can de fined as fictional characters, which are created to represent how end users will utilize a product. They made the software design task less complex and provided a meaningful archetype which we later used to assess our progress (Interaction Design Foundation, 2020). We asked ourselves questions such as:
"What are the user's motivations?”
“What are the user's goals and frustrations?”
Ideate
The goal of the Ideate phase is to construct a meaningful and actionable problem statement, also known as a Point Of View (POV) (Interaction Design Foundation, 2020). We created POVs combining three elements: the user's occupation, tasks, and purpose.
POVs were articulated as follows:
As a [ occupation ], I need to [ task ] so that I can [ purpose ].
POVs were later transformed into User Stories which were then used to guide the development of features for AstroBio.
To find the list of all the User Stories resulting from this phase, refer to the Agile Development section of the wiki.
Prototype
The Prototype phase is all about producing scale-down version of the software. Before implementing any changes into AstroBio, we used Balsamiq to validate ideas, design considerations, as well as other aspects. This allowed us to quickly identify where refinements and changes would be needed.
Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a tool used to build screen interfaces for websites and software applications. We used Balsamiq to quickly come up with mockups.
Test
From a Design Thinking perspective, the Test phase is about gathering feedback in order to come up with ways to improve the quality of the software design.
Feedback Capture Grid
Typically, this kind of grid, includes four quadrants: Likes, Criticisms, Questions, and Ideas (Interaction Design Foundation, 2020).
All the positive feedback went into the Likes quadrant, negative comments about the prototype were placed in the Criticisms quadrant, any questions or doubts were placed in the Questions quadrant, and suggestions for improvements went into the Ideas quadrant.
After a test session, the software development team would discuss and determine what user interface changes would actually be implemented into AstroBio.
References
Interaction Design Foundation. (2020, August). Design Thinking. Retrieved from Interaction Design Foundation: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking