MSc in User Experience Design — Fundamentals of User Experience Design
Paper prototyping and Evaluation Project
Project Overview
As part of the first module of the MSc in UX Design, we had to iteratively design and evaluate a paper prototype for a shopping application that would allow users to see the carbon footprint associated with the items they are considering purchasing and to monitor the carbon footprint of their shopping habits over the time.
Context
Climate change has become one of the biggest challenges and concerns of our times, and not only governments and big organizations are looking into the issue but also individuals are becoming more and more conscious of the need to reduce their carbon footprint. However, is not usual and simple to track our consumption in terms of its carbon emissions, and be aware of the carbon footprint associated to our shopping habits.
Scope
With online shopping increasing, in all segments, I decided to use clothes shopping apps as the starting point for this project. The trend to purchase clothes online, which was accelerated by the pandemic, is expected to outlast the lockdown times and stay growing in the next years.
For the application, the decision to focus on a mobile application, instead of a desktop application, was mainly lead by the fact that nearly half of consumers shop more on mobile than in-store (Ibotta, 2018). Consumers are using their mobile devices for all steps of the buyer journey, and that includes various online shopping activities.
Name of the app: Na Moda
Description: Online (and conscious) shopping for fashion and accessories, where customers can know in advance, track and compensate their carbon footprint
Design Process
The iterative design process is covered by the following blog posts:
- (Empathize) References and Research
- (Define) Challenges, Personas and Scenarios
- (Ideate) Journeys
- (Prototype & Test) Paper Prototyping and Usability Testing
Learnings & Findings
- There are many processes models and frameworks that can facilitate the whole design process. Following a model can help us to organize better the chaos from understanding to brainstorming and from brainstorming to development and testing;
- Research is a key starting point and being able to conduct it with real users can have big impact in the overall result, as you start to work less with assumptions and more with data and information. However, when we are not able to do it ourselves (time or resources restraints), it is good to find public research results online;
- After doing it 3 times for 3 different apps, you start to do a non-intentional heuristic analysis in all the apps you start to use. It is nice to look at the applications which are part of our day-by-day activities, with another perspective;
- Paper prototyping can be a challenge in the beginning, when you are trying to focus on the aesthetic over the ‘meant-to-be’ of that specific functionality or page. After few back and forth you start to realize it and be more adept of the iterative process, drafting it in a more simple way first, testing it and then doing improvements;
- Testing a paper prototyping is even more challenging than building one itself, it requires strong organization and a proper testing script defined and pre-tested before presenting it to the end-user for the usability testing;
- Implementing feedback is not easy as it sounds to be, sometimes you get attached to an idea and can end up ignoring some feedbacks. It is important to listen, but also conduct the testing with different users as they might have different views about the same topic;
- In overall, complete the project by myself was a challenging experience. I believe it would be very beneficial to have interactions with other colleagues and discuss the ideas during all the steps, however I could learn a lot as I had to self-criticize my work and pay even more attention to each detail to not miss important points;
- The time restriction was also a big challenge and could show me that it really impact creativity processes. In order to overcome this, I had to manage the time spent in each of the steps and try to go with more simple options (as for the scenarios and journeys) to complete the project on time.
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