Assignment 2

1.What is meant by the term Competitive Landscape?

Take multiple best competing apps and analyze their strength and weaknesses and how we can do better.

2.What is User Experience Mapping?

• Analyze users’ daily experience without the app — i.e. identify the problems they currently face.
• Brainstorm ways that an ideal app could solve those problems.
• Choose which problems to focus on, and decide which features were feasible for the first release.

3.What is meant by “Kill the Baby”?

Come up with a ton of cool ideas for features, then obliterate most of the ideas which are unrelated, inessential or unrealistic.

4.What is Skeuomorphism?

Most used in graphical UI design to mimic elements from the real world in our digital interfaces.

5.Tell us what steps are included in the “Idea and Design” Process.

1.Competitive landscape

2.User experience mapping

• Define personas
• Map the personas’ experience without the app
• Brainstorm the ideal assistance, come up creative ideas to solve users’ problems
• Only keep the essential and realistic ideas

3.Sketching the interactions

4.Relentless exploration

5.Establishing the theme

6.Constant collaboration

7.Testing

8.Launch

Mobile App Concept Worksheet

App name:

Time tracker

Contexts, Behaviors, Emotions:

Simply track time

Description:

The app helps to manage and track working times and measure productivity

Visualize the idea:

Easy for the user to manage time through a few simple taps.

Interaction and engagement:

User has options to create an account or use the app as a guest user. User can create multiple tasks and favorite some of them for easier time managing. App will display as a calendar, where user can view the tasks he/she has been done and how long it has taken.

Problem and solution:

The apps with similar feature on the market seem very complicated to use. I want to keep this app as simple as possible and there will be no learning curves. Install the app, write down the name of the tasks and you are good to go. Simplicity and minimal is the key for this app.  

Persona

Jean, 35, single female lives in Los Angeles, who works as a freelance graphic designer/ illustrator. She works with multiple clients on an hourly rate. She wants to find a mobile app where she can be able to easily track how much time she has worked for each client on different projects. She has been using a time tracker app called “HoursTracker” but doesn’t feel like it is the right app for her. First of all, the mobile app carries 3rd party ads for the sake of profit which can be pretty annoying; Second, the way the app describes tracking job is a little confusing. How to edit the name of the job is not easy to figure out; Third, The UI design throughout the app is not very clear, especially for the first time user. In general, Jean is a very creative and disciplined person, who wants to keep all her freelance work high quality and organized. It is common when her clients like her work and they would introduce their friends to Jean as new clients. So delivering high-quality work and giving a good impression for the clients is very important to Jean. That’s the main reason Jean wants to find a time tracking app that has a sleek and clean UI design, no ads (She is willing to pay for monthly premium to get in-app ads removed).

if Jean downloads my app and has not used the app for a while, she will get a pop up on her phone (maybe once a week, also she has options to turn it off if she finds it annoying), which is like a gentle reminder, “have you been too busy on other stuff? Please don’t forget to track time for your projects!” As a way, the app connects with its users on an emotional level.