Reflection

In the course of these two projects I feel that I learned a lot. I was really excited to apply the knowledge that I learned at my internship to these projects. In the beginning of the projects it especially came in handy because I had a base understanding of how to approach each of the steps. It was exciting to be able to grow upon these skills.

One of the ways I felt I grew the most was through critiques. Creating something and having others look at them and give feed back is one of the best ways that you can grow. I am so excited that I had that opportunity and I feel that by looking at my UI’s in both of the final prototypes you can see a growth and a more professional look. I am very happy with how everything came out.

Also, I was able to grow with my testing skills. I have had a lot of testing experience in the past with beta testing programs in computer science, and usability tests at my internship. I was able to apply this information to the tests I conducted in this class. The more tests you conduct, and analysis you make to those tests, the more you are going to learn from them. With each test I conduct the more I discover how truly important it is to the outcome of your product.

With this, I learned about paper prototyping. This is something that I had never heard of before. At first I found it to be a little strange, and I was worried to how my users would react to it. However, after some practice and several paper prototype tests, I was able to really grow these testing skills and see the benefit of them.

Lastly the videos we recorded for this class. With the final prototype video, I learned how to screen capture a video. I also developed some of my presenting and video recording skills. I practiced each of my videos several times until I ended up with a product I was happy with. It was really important to speak clearly, interestingly, and quickly, so I could explain the purpose of my application without loosing the interest of the viewer.

Overall I learned a lot through this course. I am very excited to build more upon these skills in the future.

rAlbum Prototype

When starting to create my prototype for rAlbum I made sure to think back to all of the things that I learned the last time I did this step. One of the biggest things that I took out of that experience knew the size requirements of the screens for the program I was using to create my prototype, before completely all of the comps. Last time I did not do this, and it ended up costing me a lot of time. This time I was conscious of this and it was much more efficient. I decided to inVision again because it worked out for me so well the first time.

The next step I did was to watch my first video to see how I conducted the prototype. I was very happy with the outcome last time so I decided to follow a very similar pattern.

Next I looked up another prototype so I could see if there was anything else I wanted to add to my prototype this round. The example I found was not very good. While I really liked the visual choices made to the UI especially the color scheme I didn’t feel that the prototype did a good job of explaining and showing the application. For starters there was no voice over, so there was no explanation as to what was going on. Also it was hard to keep track of. The zooming in was also very distracting and I felt like I was supposed to be looking at something particular but I didn’t know what.

Lastly, I watched this great interview of the design lead at Google. He gave some great insight into what is important in prototyping for applications. He said that it is extremely important to have several iterations, which is something I made sure do in the process of making this application. I did this with user testing and class critiques where I would get feed back on my work and go back and change it. This is an extremely important part of design so you can come up with the best product possible.

He also said that prototyping is very important because it gives the look and feel of the application. It is the best way to visually see the flow of an application and from there you can go back and make the appropriate changes.

Overall I found some great information. I applied everything I learned last time and after several attempts I came out with my final video.

The video can be seen here: