iDate App
Class Project
Stanford Continuing Studies program:
“Using Design Thinking and Simple Sketching Techniques to Ignite Innovation”
PRIMARY ROLES:
Product, UX, and Visual Designer
About this Project
This project was from a course assignment where we learned how to visualize and communicate more effectively through fast and creative sketching techniques by developing solutions for a fictitious case scenario. Although the case was fictional, we conceptualized a product with real-world solutions and opportunities.
Case Summary
Product Goals
The goal is to deliver a proposal presentation for a dating app that would address user needs using sketch techniques to tell the story.
User Problem
Users would complain of profile mismatches, causing them to become discouraged and exit the site.
Outcomes
We put together a presentation to develop an app addressing user needs by utilizing the Alexa AI engine based on our investigations, research, user interviews, and collaboration.
Process Highlights
Project plan and overview
Project Team
Our team consisted of six people with varied professional backgrounds, from Product Managers to Engineers and Designers.
Role & Responsibilities
Each team member had a role in this project to contribute ideas and sketches. Toward the final days of assembling our presentation, I was designated lead designer to create the final graphics for our presentation slides.
Methodology
Using Design Thinking Methodology consisting of Personas, Storyboarding, Empathy, and Journey Mapping with simple sketching techniques, we uncovered areas of opportunity for innovation and identified uniquely suited solutions.
Project Plan
The project spanned over ten weeks, where our team gathered weekly to engage in exercises that helped produce a final presentation to create buy-in for our solution.
Discovery and Ideation
In this course, we learned design thinking and simple sketching techniques to inspire and motivate innovative thinking in our peers by generating solutions through visual storytelling. First, we gathered in teams to break down invisible walls, create trust, and define use cases to solve.
Tangible Thinking
Through Tangible Thinking exercises, we were able to gather and collect data. We used our collective minds and physical abilities to discover opportunities for innovation end-to-end with our assigned product. We created complementing and visual recording experiences through the sketching techniques we learned through weekly drawing assignments.
Here is a sketch recording example of a user’s journey as they talk through activities they experienced throughout their day. In this journey map, we met with a classmate and had 10-minutes to sketch out their experience.
After rapidly sketching their experience, the next step would be to refine it for further visual clarity. For practice, we recorded our own daily experiences as a homework assignment. In this illustrated journey, the visuals are more defined since I had more time to add detail to each experience.
Research
Here, we used research processes for engaging with users and stakeholders to create insights by defining the problem and conducting user interviews.
Defining the Problem
Our insights through research and design thinking lead us to uncover the real problem and arrive at the right solution.
Our original case called for addressing the problem of dealing with rude men on dating websites. Our discoveries uncovered that the real problem wasn’t men being rude. It was the problem of horrible matches. After defining the problem, we brainstormed solutions on “how may we” improve matching results by focusing on the user’s experience and journey. Since much of the complaints were from women, we created our persona as a female.
Understanding our Users
By recruiting users for interviews, gathering customer insights, and observations, and documenting through sketch-noting, we collected all the necessary data to guide our decision-making and gained more profound customer empathy.
Due to time constraints, we could not use the entire Protocol Guide. So we resorted to a more condensed version that our team collaborated and agreed to. As part of the interview process, we sketched out a hypothetical user journey solution to guide the interview conversation.
Illustrated here is a sample storyboard where users are encouraged to fill out their profiles as accurately as possible to enable suitable matches. Then, each team member interviewed 2-3 candidates and collected the data from our findings to create our persona for our project.
Creating the Persona
After completing the interviews with our targeted users, we gathered our team to collect and review all the common patterns we uncovered from our findings to build a persona. Creating a persona was a valuable tool enabling our design thinking process to help represent our overall targeted users and assist in driving design decisions.
Gathering User Insights
Here, we learned research processes for engaging with customers and stakeholders to create further insights into the user’s experience through Journey Mapping.
Journey Mapping
By mapping out the user’s journey, using our persona, we uncovered essential pain points and patterns necessary to reveal the underlying problem and find the right solutions.
Uncovering User Pain Points
As a team, we utilized our collected notes from the interview, and while having the persona next to a blank sheet, we created a journey map of the customer’s experience from start to finish. The journey map enabled us to paint a better picture and understand the user’s experience through their current dating process. It was a valuable tool for uncovering missing data and unraveling unanswered questions.
Team and Individual Brainstorming
We used the “Go Broad to Go Narrow” method to define the problem. The first step of this method was to brainstorm on our own. Then, we collaborated as a team using simple sketching and other expanding and narrowing activities using Diverge and Converge techniques.
Going Broad to Go Narrow
In this exercise, we brainstormed to uncover our user’s primary problems and issues using our Journey Map and Persona Profile. We arrived at two problem statements: “How might we match people with similar expectations better” and “How might we ensure that people meet when it makes sense for both?”.
Synthesizing the Data within a Designated Space
Our next task was to collect all the data we produced from the exercise activities and tape them into a dedicated space for our team. Here, the team gathered to make decisions collectively as a group to arrive at a finalized solution and formulate a story from our findings.
Collected Data:
• Persona Posters
• Research SketchNotes
• Journey and Empathy Maps
• Problem Statements “How Might We…” Statement
Storyboards
Generating ideas to find solutions
Each of us created a set of brainstorming feature ideas and focused on solutions that would help solve our problem. The first part of the brainstorming exercise was to develop ideas on our own and then collect all our notes and ideas as a team to review and collaborate. Using the Crazy 8s method, we fine-tuned our ideas and converged them into a solution sketch.
Building Ideas:
On an 11×17 sheet of paper, we each took sketch notes using inspiration from our exclusive “Space.” We also used the internet to help find inspiration to create ideas. The idea was to fill the page with anything (obtuse or obvious things, mind maps, etc.). The time limit was 20 minutes. After brainstorming ideas, we circled the ideas that stood out most to us.
Dot Voting Solutions
After each member created their version of a solution sketch, we each posted the renderings onto the wall. We then did a gallery walk-through where each team member had a set of dots to place onto the best solution features. Next, we had a designated facilitator review each solution sketch and asked questions: “Who put the dots on this and Why?”. But the author of each sketch solution had to remain silent so participants could offer impartial feedback. After hearing the voter’s replies, the facilitator would ask who did the sketch and if anything was missing from their solution.
The team facilitator would choose only three ideas that had significance in producing a feature that would be of value to the user and help address the problem. In the three concepts that were “starred,” 2 of the stars had a common solution where match results filter through an AI engine.
Prototype and Presentation
Building Buy-In with Storytelling
Through another final round of brainstorming, team discussion, answering the problem, “How may we…?”, and using the information in our space, we arrived at a solution. We were confident and in agreement that an AI assistant would help produce better matches for the user. With this solution, we could move forward with creating a story to create buy-in.
Planning the Story
Our team gathered off-campus in a closed-door collaborative session for our final meeting to formulate the story. After throwing our ideas onto a whiteboard, we developed a presentation plan and designated each member with specific tasks. I was appointed the person responsible for producing the slides for our presentation.
Our first step in creating the story was to write down each scenario and fine-tune each storyline stage onto the whiteboard. Once we were happy with the quality of the story, we then captured the whiteboard notes onto our phones and generated a Word document to create a storytelling script.
After capturing the whiteboard notes, we erased and replaced them with quick character drawings to tell the story in graphical form. The draft renderings would help me generate the final screens for our presentation.
Storyboard Sketches
Here are a few rough sketch examples from our final team meeting to fine-tune our Storyboard for our final presentation.
Refining the sketches for the final slide presentation
I was designated the designer to finalize the screen presentations and refine the final sketches. The idea is not to create a highly polished illustration. It was to utilize sketching techniques to tell the story.
Here are some examples of the final renderings for our slide presentation:
The Final Presentation
Our team leader was responsible for delivering the final script, which he shared with the team for review and adjustments. We planned to act out parts of our storyline, giving each member a role to play through the scripts he provided. I played the role of Alexa. Here is a video of our presentation.
And here is the slide presentation.
We concluded that a smart AI assistant would be the solution to help produce better matches.
Outcomes and Results
By the end of the course, we were equipped with the tools necessary for increasing our personal and group effectiveness. We acquired skills that utilized sketching techniques for gaining buy-in and transitioning a team’s solutions to the desired outcome.
As the person who brings these tools to an organization, I learned how to utilize this highly effective technique which enabled our team to visually see a user’s journey through simple, innovative, and user-friendly sketching. As a result, I could apply this methodology to an existing project at work which helped to create buy-in and added value for our team.
In this example, I utilized the Simple Sketching Technique to create a user journey story which helped to create buy-in for a live project at work. By giving the team a visual understanding of the user’s pain points and frustrations with emotion built into the illustrations, it helped the team develop relatable empathy for this particular user and use case.