Finally, this term is coming to an end. I have to say, even though it's been a lot of work, I've really enjoyed it and have learnt a lot. Designing an app is not an easy thing to do, and it involves way more than I would have originally thought. From the research, looking at … Continue reading Creating Homi
Tag: UCD
Conventions and Patterns in UI design
What are conventions and design patterns? They are basically a description of best practices when it comes to user interface design. They are a selection of "good solutions" developed over the years by experienced designers, based on what users have found convenient or likeable. An example that's easy to understand would be the one of … Continue reading Conventions and Patterns in UI design
User Interviews
To make sure this app would actually solve frustration and be useful, I interviewed a few of my friends to find out what their biggest frustrations are when it comes to house hunting. I managed to interview 3 face-to-face, and 5 answered me by email. The face-to-face was more complete, as once people start talking, … Continue reading User Interviews
Competitor Analysis
As I mentioned in my previous article, I have decided to focus on the house hunting app idea, as I feel it is the one that would solve the most frustrations. I have therefore decided to look at a few competitors to get some inspiration for features. Most of them allow the users to create … Continue reading Competitor Analysis
App Ideas
New project this term: come up with 3 app ideas, choose one, and design it. I have to say, I'm actually pretty excited about this! My 3 ideas were the following: House Hunting App Let's face it, anyone who had to go through it knows it: house hunting is an absolute nightmare, especially in Dublin. … Continue reading App Ideas
The Proposal
The Solution
Below, you can see my final prototype! As you can see, it isn't that different from the current Home page, as I don't want to confuse the users with too much change. What's new? A "Budget" button, that you can choose to use or not: if you want to search by destination and date as … Continue reading The Solution
Decision Matrix
From the few user testing sessions I've done, more problems that need fixing came up. In order to decide which ones really need our attention, and which ones are more "future improvements', I've decided to build a decision matrix. This tool, like any other used for design process, can look very different depending on who … Continue reading Decision Matrix
User Testing With Silverback
I did three user testing sessions using Silverback, and unfortunately the quality of each recording is quite bad, for various reasons... I asked the users the same type of questions: how often do they travel, which company/website do they normally use and why, what are their main criteria when booking (destination, budget, dates, etc). Their … Continue reading User Testing With Silverback
The Importance of Empathy Maps
What is empathy? The definition given by the Oxford Dictionary is the following: "The ability to understand and share the feelings of another". This is a very important concept in human centered design, which is why, before designing anything, we must start by building empathy maps, which allow us to understand our users and their … Continue reading The Importance of Empathy Maps
My Journey in Web Design 
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