First Tries Designing a Feature — Ironhack Challenge number 1
Citymapper is an application that facilitates living and reach destinations in the urban environment. It has the ability to show you live how to get from a to b and shows you every possible way to get there.
The main problems of this application, it turned out during the interview that this app does not work in all cities and also the possibility to buy a ticket online is not possible, which would save you a lot of time. In fact the second factor is a problem which is why 3 out of 5 interviewed people would not use this application in the first place, as they would use other applications where this function is available. An important reason to get to the bottom of this problem and solve it.
The approach to solve the problem was EDIPT (Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test). First of all it was important to understand what exactly the problem of this application is and to become familiar with it. Of major importance was the interview with my friends. Later on it was essential to understand how to implement the ideas in order to solve the problem as good as possible and find a simple solution how to implement the new feature. So after I found out what the problem was, it was important to gather as many ideas as possible to avoid complicating the application.
I developed three prototypes and tested them with my friend using my sketches. I did a lot of research and read reviews of the app and checked out other apps. My focus was to make the feature nice and easy to use.
In the end the following prototype is my personal result:
In this process it was very important for me personally not to lose sight of the focus and to concentrate on the essential problem. It was very helpful to talk to 5 people about their own perception of this problem. I also went crazy with the first prototype and thought I was doing everything wrong and in the end I came to the conclusion that it is useful to make several prototypes because it got better and better every time.
