Project Description:
For my User Experience module in the second year, as part of a group of two, I was requested to design a paper prototype, based on a career guidance application.
Problem Statement:
The purpose of the app is to assist students with an interest in psychology to explore their options in various career paths as well as college courses. When considering course options or career paths, students and academics can easily become very stressed and overwhelmed by the various sources or information available to them.
When this problem is not fixed it can cause feelings of burnout, anxiety, and cognitive overload. Techniques such as competitive analysis, user research, interviews/questionnaires and paper prototyping were used.
Learning Objectives:
Understanding of personas and scenarios, brainstorming, design of initial prototype and redesign for final prototype, self-assessment and critique, and process planning and management.
Learner Outcomes:
During this project, I discovered the value of using personas when creating a design. The persona describes an archetypal user of the technology, demonstrating an understanding and empathy with the audience.
I learned how to create paper prototypes and refine them in an iterative design process, as well as providing a personal description of the design process and incorporating feedback.
I incorporated critical analysis and evaluation into my design process, it's planning and management, including my learning throughout.
The persona used was a student named Alex, who has just completed the leaving cert and is feeling stressed about his course options for college.
Empathy mapping helped to put me in the shoes of a student who is considering their career options.
Journey mapping allowed me to understand the journey of the user and find out what problems they may encounter and how we can overcome these problems with this app