Process of Creating an App

For three months at York University and Sheridan College studying design, I have been developing a social app called ‘Bump’ with a team of 4 members. Its main purpose is to reconnect people who have previously interacted, re-establishing relationships or bringing together new acquaintances. The initial idea was conceived through the process of brainstorming and filtering ideas through a concept map related to social media. This process was further defined through a PACT analysis (people, activity, context, technology), which introduced conceptual nuance by incorporating the perspective that relationships live within a spectrum of continuous change throughout our lives. From this point, we had fully developed our idea and moved on to the user research phase.

We conducted secondary research that showcased qualitative data on how aging had a direct effect on people’s relationships with an increase in social isolation and loneliness. Through our findings, we were able to start user research on social connectivity by asking questions about motivation for getting in touch with past acquaintances, roadblocks and tools that might help overcome them, and how we could implement a solution that caters to users’ free time. We analyzed the data collected from 4 participants and categorized it qualitatively and quantitatively. By colour-coding our user results, we were able to better identify each individual and point out the major pain points they had when interacting with old acquaintances. Problems such as time inaccessibility were analyzed through our user research, which gave the team a direction where we should start building our app’s features.

Moving forward into the development process, we built a list of app features that were necessary for our app to function. We outlined the importance of each feature through a systems chart that follows the MoSCoW method, which categorized our app based on priority of must have, should have, could have, and won’t have features. This categorization system made it easier to establish important attributes that were discussed in interviews during user research, in order to create a navigational system map of all the essential features. By this point, we had established a strong foundation for our app’s functionality, which we used to create user personas structured around our interviewees and personify our app’s main target audience. Using these user personas, we were able to make context scenarios that directed individual storylines that reflected how we would structure the user flow.

Moving onto developing the visuals of the app, we conducted research on interface designs within IOS applications. Each team member then created individual mood-boards to generate ideas for our design regarding typeface and colour story. After creating several iterations of our app’s visual composition, we started the process of linking a prototype for user testing. We collected data through screen recording and comment observation from four test participants as we presented scenarios for the user to follow and for us to observe their interpretation of the task. Through this user testing research, we were able to assess visual accessibility problems such as difficulty reading small font size, and to take note of user interactions that were harder to complete. At the end of the user testing session, we focused on synthesizing our qualitative data with our users’ responses by colour-coding commonalities between the participant reactions and highlighting important comments or interactions they had during the interview. We then proposed new changes to our app’s composition from the analyzed data, establishing new solutions for user interaction and emotional feel in the interface design.

It was through our user research, prototype development, and user testing approach that we were able to pinpoint the initial pain points, and to review the problems that were found within our design. For instance, a common issue for participants during user testing was navigating the search filter system, as despite its importance it was not immediately visually obvious or understandable. Thus, we took their feedback and redesigned the search function by strategically utilizing colour to emphasize its presence. Our varied research methodology helped our team gain insight for future improvements that allowed us to take risks for innovation, and taught us to appreciate the value research has for product development.

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