Gaining New Information
Credit to TV Time
The human being is at the center of everything, even digital experiences. We must learn to take into account what the user wants and needs from the product we are planning to create.
Several chapters comprised in the book, “The Elements of the User Experience” by Jesse James Garrett, explain that “…Effective communication is a key factor in the success of your product. The world’s most powerful functionality falters and fails if users can’t figure out how to make it work.” A designer can create the most aesthetically pleasing layout of an application and to the naked eye, it would seem perfect, but when presented to the client and its users, they can’t figure out to move around the application and use it to its fullest potential.
Mistakes like these are common in product design and sadly, the solutions get overlooked. As designers, we need to include the users in the ideation process to create the most successful product.
In an FS blog article containing several lines from Warren Berger’s “A More Beautiful Question”, he states “Each stage of the problem-solving process has distinct challenges and issues–requiring a different mind-set, along with different types of questions. Expertise is helpful at certain points, not so helpful at others; wide-open, unfettered divergent thinking is critical at one stage, discipline and focus is called for at another.”
It is imperative to broaden our horizons to solve problems as they’re presented because they need to be solved and not avoided by placing nice design work over it to distract the user until they figure out that they can’t use the application properly and the business isn’t as successful as we planned on being in the beginning.
Every single problem needs to be addressed differently, since no problem is the same, even if one or more falls under the same umbrella. For example, as a designer, I was presented with the task of redesigning an application that has poor interface and interaction design and researching how to improve certain aspects of the product based on competitors in the industry as well as discovering the intended and desired audiences that will benefit most from the application itself and the redesign of the interface and overall visual design.
Initial Brainstorming Session
The app that I chose to improve was one I was already familiar with because of years of utilizing its resources. I have used TV Time to keep track of my tv show viewing habits and discover forgotten shows from decades ago. As an avid consumer of the application, I’m able to recognize and dissect the design issues I have faced as a user over the years.
Competitor Analysis
Competitor Analysis Continued
Before diving off the deep end of the design process, a designer must complete valuable research to help them uncover what makes the application unfavorable to certain users as well as how competitors in the industry are interpreting this idea and making it successful or unsuccessful in their image. Taking all these steps will allow me to create a reinvented model of the TV Time app with collected data and necessary analysis.