Thursday 30 June 2022
A quick note before I start
This article is largely quite diary-esque in style. ‘First I did this, then I did that’ kind of thing. I’d like to come back and reflect properly on the whole rapid ideation sprint in a further post, but for now, I want to record the key points of the process I’ve followed over the past few days in as much detail as possible, so that I can take a step back later this week and critically reflect on and evaluate my actions and thought processes.
Another few whirlwind days, but I’ll start by saying that I’m really pleased with where I’m up to so far with my project for the rapid ideation sprint. It’s not often that I’m really happy with things I’ve made, but I feel that I’ve learned lots of things from the past several days that I’d like to take with me and explore further as my Masters journey continues.
Picking up where I left off last Saturday – I did indeed continue onto Day 2 of my one-woman design sprint on Sunday. I started with half an hour or so of ‘Lightning Demos’ – quick research sessions looking into similar products made by others from which I could draw inspiration for my own designs – then captured my key findings on yet more Post-Its.
One site in particular, Casserole Club, proved especially influential. I really liked their clean, simple design, with minimal colours and a clear layout that was easy to navigate. I was also impressed by the design of the content on the page – testimonials from real customers, clearly signposted journeys for different user groups, minimal text, reassuring, jargon-free language. All this tied in well to the ‘big opportunity areas’ I identified on Saturday, particularly ‘inclusive language’ and ‘reduce stress’.
After this session, I returned to my map/sketch hybrids, and found myself drawn to one in particular. The idea was to create some kind of voluntary skills matching service – a way for people who needed help with something to ask for help from people with the required skills who were willing to lend a hand. Again, The Casserole Club was a key source of inspiration – the service matches people in the local community with people who would benefit from a home-cooked meal, then the ‘cook’ takes a plate of food round to the ‘diner’.
This idea moves away somewhat from my initial plan to create some kind of platform for sharing digital skills with older adults. In fact, it was an anecdote from my desk research on Saturday that stuck with me and convinced me to take a slightly different direction. One older speaker in one of the videos I watched said that, in his view, it wasn’t a lack of resources that was the problem in terms of bridging the digital divide – it was getting people interested in technology, the internet, and digital in the first place. (Gurney, 2022).
This idea really struck a chord with me. How might we show people how digital technology can have a tangible, positive impact on their everyday lives, not by explicitly teaching digital skills, but showing the positive power of digital to bring people together?
I’d come across the notion of the internet being a powerful tool for connecting people in very real ways in David Gauntlett’s wonderful book Making is Connecting (2018) (I’d like to discuss his book in more detail at some point because I think the ideas expressed there are wonderfully hopeful). I wondered if I might be able to use this concept to create something that would allow people – and not necessarily just older people – to see technology as a way to connect and come together to help each other, in a way that truly encompassed and showcased the ‘good side’ of digital. Not only that, but something that brought people together – through the internet and in real life – could also play a role in reducing the social isolation and loneliness many people (again, not just, but often older people) have to endure.
With all this in mind, I decided to revise my long-term goals from Day 1 as follows:
Match people who need help with something, with people who have the skills and want to help.
Reduce social isolation among (older) people, foster positive relationships within local communities, provide safe opportunities for getting and giving help.
I took the map/sketch I’d roughly drafted for this idea on Saturday and developed it into a more detailed map, with user journeys for both the people who might use the service to get help and for people with help to offer. I kept my ‘big opportunity’ areas in sight as I sketched out the flows:
Given the constraints of the sprint, I decided to focus on the ‘customer’ flow rather than the ‘volunteer’ flow for creating my prototype.
I actually made it all the way through Day 3 on Sunday as well. I sketched out some ideas for a name, headlines and taglines, as well as some rough copy drafts. I settled on the name ‘Kindshare’, and the tagline: ‘Connecting people who’d like some help with people who’d like to give it’. I felt both of these captured the spirit of the site’s mission well, and, like Casserole Club, were clear and not convoluted in their meaning.
I then moved on to a detailed storyboard following the customer persona of ‘Doreen’:
Being better with words than I am with drawings, I used words as my artist’s tool of choice. This proved really useful when I sat down to create a higher-fidelity prototype, as I already had the key journey points mapped out, as well an idea for what kind of content should appear at each stage of the user flow.
I wanted to practice using Figma for my prototype, so on Sunday evening, I created a moodboard in the program to keep track of my ideas for layouts and colour schemes:
On Monday, I spent a few hours mocking up my first prototype, taking me to Day 4 of my design sprint. A UX Designer colleague was kind enough to cast his eye over the initial designs, which resulted in a change to the colour scheme to ensure I’d used colours with sufficient contrast (thereby increasing accessibility) as well as some changes to the font sizes:
Although rapid, I still wanted my prototype to be realistic, so that my testers can imagine themselves using the ‘live’ product as effectively as possible. I also mocked up a brief magazine article – what Jake Knapp refers to as the “brochure façade” (2016: 122) – which I plan on showing to my test participants before showing them the prototype itself. This way, I’ll be able to get a feel for people’s first, gut reactions to the concept – how does it make them feel? What do they think the service does? – before they see the actual product.
I gave myself a couple of evenings off after finishing my initial prototype on Tuesday – mainly just to let my brain cool down a bit(!). I’m planning on carrying out at least part of the next and final part of the design sprint – Day 5 – over the next week or so. I might not be able to finish all my tests (aiming for at least 3 or 4) before we present our ideas in next week’s webinar, but I’ll at least have a functioning prototype which looks realistic and that I’m happy with.
Enough typing now – time to sleep. Though I will note that I’d like to discuss the linguistic choices I made throughout the Kindshare prototype in more detail at some point.
References
CASSEROLE CLUB. Available at: https://casseroleclub.com/ [accessed 30 June 2022]
GURNEY, Steve. 2022. Technology and Older Adults - Closing the Digital Divide [webinar]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTXUQJPol3o&t=3s [accessed 30 June 2022].
KNAPP, Jake, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz. 2016. Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. Simon & Schuster.
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