critiq

This project was done over the course of a semester for a Barnard College class: Intro to Contextual Designs. The prompt was to pick a user group, research them to find breakdowns, and then create something to solve those breakdowns.

Part 1 Research

After deciding to focus on visual arts students at Columbia University, we did field interviews which focused on allowing users to discuss their process thoroughly and get into the details they themselves often forget about. After that, we coded the transcripts to find commonalities and created the following models to show their standards of practice.

Culture diagram showing how users are affected by the policies and practices of the world and space around them, and where they are having issues—shown as red lightning bolts.

Flow diagram showing how users interact with other people and spaces, and where they are having issues—shown as red lightning bolts.

Sequence diagram showing the order of steps taken to complete the task of an assigned piece of work for class, and where they are having issues—shown as red lightning bolts.

Part 2 Planning

The next step was to pick one of the earlier breakdowns addressed, and figure out how best to solve it within the current practices. We decided to focus on breakdowns around trouble planning, feeling isolated from their fellow artists, and lacking feedback until it was too late to do anything. With that in mind, “Critiq” was created and we made a User Experience Design, or UED, to map out the different capabilities and areas our users would interact with. This was then turned into quick iterations of wireframes.

Part 3 Prototyping

Those wireframes were then made into 2 workable paper prototypes. We went through wizard-of-oz style testing with UX experts and other people in our user group to find out what they found intuitive or where they were getting stuck.

Part 4 High Fidelity

Using the feedback from the paper prototyping and user testing, we then designed a final high fidelity, working prototype in figma. This included designing a logo and creating a color palette focused around orange which has been shown to boost creativity. A full walkthrough of the capabilities of the design is included in the video below.