Challenge

Solution

USER’S COMMUTING PROBLEM

Piper is a graduate student at New York University, living in an apartment in Brooklyn. Also, she lives at a high-level building so she needs to use her building’s elevator every day. Piper thinks the elevator is too slow. It almost takes five minutes each time. It is a kind of waiting problem. Not only for the elevator and also for all public transportation.

brainstorm

It is really hard to change the elevator directly, so I am trying to use the theory of relativity to let Piper feel the waiting time is not so long. So I need to know her hobby.

Piper loves music in her leisure time and she listens to “pretty much everything”. If someone recommends one song to her, she would like to take a try.

ideation

Inspired by Piper’s hobby and 5 minutes, I decided to design a music app for her. Given it is specifically designed for her waiting time, I want it to be different from the other Apps and can add more interaction with others by the function of Sharing Your Music

FUNCTION DESIGN

paper prototype & user testing

At first, I made a quick sketch of my idea. It includes three main functions and I want to use six pages to show them. Piper said she adores this idea because it is sweet and very suitable for her because she “literally lives with her music”. But Piper thinks the emotion function can be designed for both public and private, and hope the homepage can also recommend songs to match her mood. Based on Piper’s feedback, I changed the first two pages and added 3 pages after the homepage to satisfy her need for privacy and better interaction with App

WIREFRAME &  DIGITAL PROTOTYPE

This is the final deliverable document required in the class. The whole research and design process above was finished within one day and was documented in one week. In July 2018, I iterated the project and finished the later UI design as below.

#1: REPLACE AND REDESIGN AI ASSISTANCE

In the original version, AI Assistance is placed in the home’s sub-navigation, but the user may ignore it because its original importance level is lower. In the new design, to highlight Piper’s need for more interactions with the application itself, I used the drop-down window to place the AI assistance function so it is easier for users accessing it at any time.

#2: COMPLETE AI PLAYLIST

In the new design, I also improved the complete process of how AI Assistant can help you create your customized playlist. It is up to users' choices to satisfy their in-time needs based on their situations, keywords want to hear about and their preferred melody.

#3: GEOGRAPHICAL PATTERN TO CARD BASED DESIGN & NEW FUNCTION

In the new version I changed the sharing page from the geographical pattern to the Card-Based Design (I still remain the radar map as the quick loading screen in this function in case of the back-end programming is too heavy) The main reasons are first, showing the user’s direction and distance may leak their privacy and secondly, if sometimes there are lots songs are available at the same time, it will be difficult for users to check and select the songs that they like quickly. The card-based design provides stable and unlimited space for users to switch songs easily.

I also provide some subjective standards (how many people are listing this song now) for users to make a decision on which one might be better if they totally have no idea about the shared songs. Additionally, I also add the tracking function for users to encourage them to share their songs to achieve accomplishment and find more friends with the same tastes.

interaction design video

Please click the video above to see the details about the iterated UI and interaction design. Or you can review the images below to know the main functions separately.

Choose Emotion & Enter Homepage

Users can choose their current emotions and decide to show it to the public or friends only. The homepage supports three special functions which are daily songs, my radio, and daily word.

Create Customized Playlist

Five minutes allow the users to create their personal playlist with ai assistance. Users need to choose their situations, keywords, and melody that they like, so the application can create a special playlist based on their preference.

Sharing Page

Users can share the songs that they like to the public. On the Sharing page, users can find shared songs and notice how many people are listening to those now. Users can also check their shared songs for details.

Gift Page

Users can send a song as a gift to the others based on their emotions. In the gift page, you can check the gifts that you received and send. You can send a gift to your friends or the public. For example, if someone is upset now, try to request a happy song to cheer them up!

importance of iteration

This project is a quick challenge within 24 hours. Though the ideation part is highly evaluated, we can notice that the former prototypes still have so many details to work with. Because of the time limitation, it is impossible to finish one project perfectly for the first time. Thus, the later iteration of work is really important in this project. It also shows how iteration can improve my project from a low-fi draft to a mature project. This experience teaches me that you may be able to come up with a great idea within 1 day, but a great design needs more time to work with.