Iteration 2 - Findings + next steps
This period has been a bit of an overworking haze, I have dragged myself over the finish line and whilst I am happy with all the content that has gone into my work I am not pleased with its presentation in the case study video. I am frustrated because communication is a key UX skill and I wish I had been able to give it more time and more energy.
I have really enjoyed being in the obsessive build phase but had I started it earlier in the project timeline it wouldn’t have become so concentrated in the second half of the project. I could have enjoyed working with this kind of dedication without it having to spill into this much overwork.
It’s a relief to have handed in, my body has broken down on me and I intend to rest now as this rhythm of work is totally unsustainable over such long stretches.
This project was difficult, I have never done a UX project from start to finish before and I found myself constantly up against situations I had never encountered before in my life, all of which required a humility and vulnerability I am not accustomed to incorporating into my professional world. User interviews, working in an iterative way, letting someone see the idea of a product and not a polished final artefact, watching someone else break my prototype in ways that I had not considered even though I had already broken it in so many more ways than I thought were possible whilst building and testing – all of this was new to me.
I also did not realise how hard prototyping a search experience would be, I had the constant feeling throughout that if I had some coding knowledge under my belt that this would have been a lot smoother. Not to add that I had never used Protopie before this project and learning new software requires courage and time, both limited resources. But Protopie was the only prototyping tool I could find that made it easy to integrate your phone’s camera – a feature I did not want to compromise on as I thought it would be something my users would find useful and had the pleasure of being proved right on that account.
If I had stuck to a program I already have experience in or built an app that didn’t require retrieving and filtering content from a database like a search function does many elements of this project would have been more manageable, but it also would not have been the solution which I believe best helps my user. When all is said and done, I know that I could have had time to crank out a version 3 of the prototype had I bitten off amounts that I could actually chew – even though this is the moment at which this project is handed in I plan to produce one more iteration of the product with what I have learned from my last set of tests before incorporating it into my UX portfolio.