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Overview
Partico is a mobile app I developed with a team of four for the University of Washington Makerspace community. The makerspace community consists of the CoMotion Makerspace and Area 01 Dabble Lab where students have access to software and machinery to help bring their ideas to life.
Partico is focused on providing makers the ability to explore new machinery, develop their skills, get one-on-one help, and feel comfortable in the space to work on any project they desire.
In 10 weeks during Winter 2017, this was the process we followed:
- User Research
- Personas
- Design Sketches & Ideas
- Storyboards
- Information Architecture Sitemap
- Paper Prototyping
- Wireframes
- High-Fidelity Mockups
User Research
To begin, it is important to understand what the users were finding as problems in the makerspace so we conducted four user interviews with consistent users of the makerspace and learned about their experiences. After analyzing the information and learning about the technologies that are currently trying to ease these issues, these are the main challenges we found.
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Machinery would be constantly be unavailable.
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It was difficult to find staff for help.
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It's hard to find a starting point to learning new machinery.
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They were unaware of events hosted in the space.
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They wanted the space to feel more welcoming to new and old makers.
Understanding the user's gave us a clearer image of what to focus on moving forward.
Personas
In order to always keep our users in mind, we created personas that allowed us to focus on the desires, pains, and goals of users in the makerspace based on the information we gathered from our interviews. After multiple iterations, we created Oliver and Eleanor. They help to represent the the users of the makerspace and who Partico is creating for.
Design Sketches & Ideas
As we began working on ways to tackle the challenges users were experiencing, we each sketched out different solutions and ideas. We came to the conclusion that there were 3 main components to the application that we wanted to solidify: the Tool Library, People Help, and Tutorial Help.
Storyboard
To put our designs into context, we created storyboards to represent how the different functions would be used. We picked scenarios that are common challenges for users of the makerspace, based on information we gathered during user research, and used Partico to alleviate the problem.
Information Architecture (IA) Sitemap
To understand the navigation of Partico and what the full application would do, we created an IA Map. After iterating through our design ideas and the challenges we wanted to solve, we were able to gain a full understanding of the features and interactions that would be included in the application.
Paper Prototyping
After coming to an understanding of how the application would work, we needed to test if the navigation made sense to potential users. We created 3 tasks and gathered 4 potential users to test the paper prototype of Partico. As the users were navigating through the app, we asked them to speak us through their steps and what they were finding confusing, difficult, or positive.
After conducting the testings and gaining each user's feedback on what was intuitive and not, we were able to understand what needed changing as we moved forward.
Wireframes
Moving forward, we created low-fidelity wireframes of Partico and the various screens that users would encounter when using it. This, along with the paper prototype, began to shape the layout and design of the application. The screens are annotated to allow us to fully understand the features on each screen.
High-Fidelity Mockups
The hi-fi mockups we created depict what the official app would appear like. Every aspect of the design and different screens are influenced by the multiple iterations and information gathered in previous steps as well as continuously remembering what the users wanted.
For an extensive view of the user-centered design process and documents, please visit here.
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