Welcome to Experience Design! This week we’ll explore how to take an idea for an app from the initial big idea to a powerful tool on the screen of a mobile phone.
Your Team: Elizabeth Berger, Gary Reimer, Leo Jiang and (Grace) Ellen Reid
http://elizabeth.demonstration.s3.amazonaws.com/SMART%20BUY%20FINAL/content/index.html
Fantastic job, Design Experience Team! I’m very unfamiliar with the ins and outs of app development and all the terminology associated with it, so I really appreciated the simplified language and overall great organized structure of the OER. As for SMART BUY, I think it’s a fantastic idea that would be especially useful now as the climate change crisis grows and people try to be more conscious about their carbon footprint, and using SMART BUY to outline every step of the design process really helps conceptualize what needs to be done, making it much more effective than just simply stating the steps. One question that arises is how exactly are anticipated demographics and the constructed personas built? You’ve mentioned the different generations that would probably utilize this app, but what kind of research is used to determine there is demand for a given app?
Thanks Design Experience Team – I really enjoyed this OER! This was all new information for me and it’s an area I’m very interested in learning about so I found it well organized and easy to navigate and follow and I liked the flip cards with your avatars with your own specific thoughts for the app. I thought the storyboard was well laid out and easily demonstrated the different stages you went through in creating the app and I also thought the topic was interesting and the demographic you included very relevant. I think there would be a market for an app like this and I like the aspect of responsibility that the user has in terms of choosing companies that align with their own values or perhaps no longer using companies that don’t. I think as sustainability and environmental awareness becomes more of a focus this is a great way to have consumers be more aware and responsible in their buying decisions. I liked the feature of using a map to see what stores partner with the app and I think most users would agree that is extremely helpful and efficient. I also think that as we continue to try to support local businesses after Covid and continue to deal with issues in the global supply chain, it might be a great time for an app like this to hit the market to help consumers find local businesses that align with their values that they can buy from and change some of their purchasing habits.
Hi Asha, you highlighted in your post many of the same concerns and thoughts we had. Our goal was to create a retail ecosystem of sustainability-oriented consumers and businesses that would form a learning community based on shared values. Once the basic concept has taken root, later iterations of the app can be enhanced with augmented reality to produce a truly compelling experience. Who knows maybe Zuckerberg will want it to become part of the metaverse? Just kidding, although not completely.
This was an interesting approach to teaching us about user experience and giving us insights into the process. It looks like you put a lot of thought and work into the design of your app.
As you make any revisions to your project for Dr Vogt this week, ask yourself about what the user design experience of this lesson is for those people engaging in this course to learn how to create an exceptional user experience? Will someone be able to follow these steps to set up their own user design experience or are there key pieces of information and how tos that are missing? For instance, in the pre-design section, would it be helpful to demonstrate how to do a SWOT analysis? How are you engaging learners in this process? One way to do this would be to prompt the learners to work through each step with you, with a project of their own – where this makes sense – and give learners a place to share their responses for their project. Another key piece here that is missing is actually engaging in different app experiences with good user design and poor user design principles in mind – that you’ve shared with the learners. Then get the learners to make notes on the experience. What did they enjoy about their experience and what did they not enjoy? Can they identify ways of improving this user experience?
Thanks Erica! What struck us about your and other peer feedback was that our project didn’t highlight the difference between Experience Design (XD) and User Experience Design (UX). As such, we added a new section called “Defining UX, XD, UI” with our interpretation of these terms and how they apply to SMART BUY.
We conceptualized the SMART BUY app to help us understand Experience Design and apply our learned best practices to something tangible. The focus of our app process was on design, not all development steps from A-Z.
We did not address all the steps that design teams would need to take, such as: performing a SWOT analysis, determining how the app generates money, deciding if data analytics is outsourced. Even though many of these questions are valid and crept into our conversations, they were out of scope. We recognize we should have been more clear about this in our presentation so we added a section to the project “Process and Scope”.
Finally, you mentioned an alternative way of engaging learners with our material would be to have them walk through each stage with a project of their own. I think this could work too!
Thought-provoking feedback Erica! Thanks.
Thanks Eizabeth. Looking forward to checking out those new bits and pieces that you added.
Excellent work Experience Design Team! The storyboard and concept video of your app are wonderful, and I can really see this becoming a real app on the market in the near future if you guys really wanted to continue to pursue it. There are some interesting articles and studies out there that discuss the complex psychology among consumers regarding how they balance cost with ethics, and how the ethics themselves can be complicated. Questions like “is it better to shop local or fair trade?” or “does local mean ethical?” are bound to confuse consumers if they scan their products without a clear understanding of what exactly they’re looking for. Do you think that your app would ever allow brands and products to advertise, thus boosting exposure of ethical/local products? Or would you prefer for the app to stay more like a tool for consumers to use to explore and make their own purchasing decisions?
Great job again!
Hi Liam,
Thanks for your feedback and great questions. The Smart Buy Ap has a few different rating tools. When the user scans the bar code of a product with their phone, they receive a product-specific ESG rating (out of 100) and a My Values rating (from A-D). I think the My Values rating would be helpful for a consumer that has an opinion on sustainability and social governance and prioritizes some practices over others. For example, they might prioritize local shopping over fair trade, which theoretically should be reflected in their My Values score. In terms of advertising, we would have to learn more about the pros and cons of advertising and answer the bigger question: what will be our source of revenue. Let me know if this answers your questions.
Well done all of you! Great project and very interesting applications! I absolutely love the organization of your project and how it brought us through the entire process of user design development. Wonderful use of Rise – it’s a great linear program and very appropriate for bringing us as users through the design process. It made me reflect about the design process as absolutely essential to our collective work as learning designers. In my own professional work, we try to go through a design process as a course team at the planning stages of a course. We will do such things as creating personas, storyboards prototyping etc. So while you have produced a great example of user design with an tech tool, the larger applications are definitely there too for any kind of design scenario. Well done! Curious: what program you used to create the videos? I like the style!
Hi Sage, thanks for you comments and I’m glad you enjoyed the project and found it useful. It was a tremendous learning experience for us as well. Ellen produced the videos and would be the one to check with if you wanted more background on that.
Experience Design Team, You’ve done a great job of presenting your process of developing this app concept. The post that I read immediately before this one was from Joelle presenting about Apper, the app creator app. I saw myself using something like that to create some simple and more informational tools or even having students utilize it by following a design process. I was intrigued and inspired by that presentation and it brought up more questions surrounding the customization and UX diversity. Your presentation dove into that process and answered many of my questions about all the customizable data and tools used to create a custom UX. You did mention that the development stage can be expensive, I am curious if your group had conversations around the monetization of your app concept? In other words, how would it support itself. Some of the best apps make the monetization part of UX so seamless we barely know what the product is. This is likely key to creating a sustainable app that doesn’t end up like the competitors that you mentioned.
Great presentation team Smart Buy, it was so easy to navigate and very appealing. Being a visual learner, I found the video used at the beginning gave me a thorough oversight of your project. Your content was packed with a lot of useful information. The only thing I would add since this is an OER is having an area for users to interact with.
Well done!
Hi Analesa, thanks for your comments. Rise makes it convenient and easy to set information out in a clear and concise way and I’m glad that fit your learning style. It’s a great suggestion to provide an opportunity for classmate interaction. This would have enhanced the value of the project and in retrospect, we definitely would consider it.
Great presentation team Smart Buy, it was so easy to navigate and very appealing. Being a visual learner, I found the video used at the beginning gave me a thorough oversight of your project. Your content was packed with a lot of useful information. The only thing I would add since this is an OER is having an area for users to interact with. Well done!
Hi, the issue of monetization wasn’t one we discussed much. Our motivation wasn’t to make money obviously or we would have chosen to design some other product; we were really only hoping to cover development and maintenance costs. However, accepting advertising would have undermined the principle that businesses gain attention by earning it through a high ESG score and customer satisfaction. Non-participating advertisers would have added clutter and might not have had the values fit we wanted to promote, so that leaves donations, crowd-sourcing or a small fee or subscription.
Hi Experience Design Team! You guys did such a wonderful job of explaining the steps of building user experience for an app! The website was easy to flow and the ideas are clearly displayed. I have zero knowledge about anything related to app development, so the way you completed the first two steps certainly helps me understand and picture the process. When I look at the four steps for creating a better user experience, I instantly think of how I can use the same four steps to provide a better learning experience for my students. For example, the pre-design part would be understanding the students, considering the goal that the learning activities will guide the students to achieve, and selecting what kind of learning/assessment tools to use to support and measure student growth. I’ve never used Storyboard to design anything before, and I appreciate how clear your sample is. My question is that what is the most challenging part that you guys find during the first two stages of designing? How did you guys overcome the challenges?
Hi Trista, what were the greatest challenges? I think the fact that none of us had ever made an app before either. We had to research how to do this ourselves before presenting it so there was a learning curve for us. Also, every app interacts with its user and its environment in different ways, so working out in detail each step and the order the steps should take place required time and thought. Finally, this app was intended to create a learning community so we needed to take the social aspect into account.
Hi Team!
I echo all of our peers’ sentiments – the user experience of your OER was awesome! Navigating through the course modules/lessons, I felt I was really taking in the most important processes and stages of Experience Design, while simultaneously reaping the benefits of a well designed product itself – your website. The modular format of your OER also made it feel almost gamified in a sense; I truly enjoyed making progress as I checked off the lessons of the course, rather than aimlessly perusing. Was this an intentional goal our your design?
Hi Alexis! Thanks for the feedback. We picked Articulate Rise because it is an excellent responsive authoring tool (it looks great on mobile devices). One of its great perks (in a learning management system) is that it tracks what a user completes and bookmarks where the users left off in the course. So to answer your question, we didn’t pick the tool for the tracking functionality, more so for its responsive nature!
Hello, Team Experience Design!
What a thoughtfully designed and well-presented concept. Kudos to you! I was particularly impressed with the work you completed creating user personas. One of my favourite quotes from Pragmatic Marketing (https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/framework/) is, “your opinion while interesting, is irrelevant.” It is as relevant for educators as it is to marketers to contemplate this as we are creating a product for others. Whether it is an app, MOOC, website or PowerPoint presentation the needs of the user and learner must be considered above our likes, dislikes or beliefs. Creating user personas for our students (regardless of age) will also help support how we develop or layout content for learning including the type and size of the font, colours, images etc. I also appreciated your use of storyboards and videos to help us understand the process you took, the importance of taking those steps and providing the steps that need to be followed to design a user-friendly app.
Around the idea itself, I am curious what recommendations or certifications you would put in place to verify the ESG of companies? Many companies are jumping on the Green Bandwagon and Green-Washing is rampant with larger companies creating their “certifications” that do not really address true aspects of environmental sustainability.
Hi Nicole,
In SMART BUY we actually indicate SMART BUY partners with a logo that is different from the rest of the stores. In order to obtain partnership status, the store needs to provide complete ESG information for their products. Once that information has been assessed they would receive “certification” from SMART in the form of the logo.
Really great app, the SMART BUY team! What a unique OER. I really like the minimalistic look of the design of the app itself. Very clean and appealing. It also looks very user-friendly. I definitely would be very interested in trying it out!. One thought I had when watching the user experience video: I wonder if it would be interesting to allow users to set goals (or create a plan) and track their progress over time in reaching that goal. I see there is some aspect like this but I think it would be interesting to see more analytics into our purchasing behaviors. It could potentially give analytics into which types of products we tend to buy with lower ESG scores… or perhaps some tips and tricks to support and encourage more sustainable shopping. I was also thinking that it would be neat to have an “insights” sections that links to interesting blog posts are articles that are relevant to the user’s interests/values in terms of sustainability that help the user make better decisions (in addition to checking the ESG score). This section could link to external information (or even eventually be written by the team). I just think about the apps that I engage with the most when it comes to bettering my experiences, and they’re always is a goal/planning element, making it very personal, and ample opportunity to grow my knowledge. Sometimes the element of unlocking levels can be very engaging, as we’ve learned with gamification. Anyways.. just some thoughts!! Amazing job!!
Jasmine,
Thank you for your response and insights. The idea of goals is interesting and having those coicide with analytics, and a deeper mine into the data behind the various products would be powerful. There is great potential for an app such as this to educate and hold a mirror up to consumer behaviour. With iterations and updates, there are opportunities fors apps to grow and reflect the evolving needs and motivations of the user. In walking through this process, it’s apparant how experience design needs to be responsive, not just in the initial design stages, but in the ongoing evolution of design. We really appreciate your participation and thoughtful contributions! Thanks!
Hi, Week 7 team. Thank you for the beautiful OER presented. Although the purpose of your app is ambitious, you managed to introduce it in a well-organized fashion. I agree with you that creating an optimal user experience should be the focus of any app because UX is the ultimate standard for a successful app. I also have to say that introducing your team with the individualized tips for the ultimate user experience is a nice touch, and it was prudent from your side to check the existing apps and their features to get inspired on the dos and don’ts. In the Retailers part, you mentioned that the app aims to create an affinity space for trusted retailers to build solid relationships with like-minded customers, I think this is a brilliant idea as it creates a community of participants where the app transcends being a purchasing tool to establish a network of progressive and green individuals who share the same values and vision of the future. This gives the app a higher level of significance because it goes beyond consumerism. Moreover, I like how you thought about the functionality of the app and ESG preferences, the shopping communities, and the personal rating and notes. However, I am not sure what you mean by “partnered SMART Buy stores.” What is that partnership like?
Now, we all know that consumers care about the environment, but would they prioritize healthy, environmental products over other convenient/popular brands? The shopping communities of the app might help to promote awareness and commitments towards the goal, but does that suffice to shift the interest of the public permanently? I am also curious to know what UX weaknesses you attempted to avoid in your design.
I appreciate your effort and creativity.
Hi Feras,
Great questions. Partnered SMART BUY stores would be stores that willingly collaborate with SMART BUY providing the ESG details regarding their products. On the SMART BUY up, the icons for their stores would also be different from other stores to distinguish them. We do believe that SMART BUY users would prioritize healthy environmental products over other convenient brands, otherwise, they would not go into the trouble of using the app in the first place. The purpose of this app is to promote awareness and commitments towards ESG. Shifting the interest of the public permanently is beyond the efforts of just this one app. For UX design, we tried to avoid providing too much or too little information for the users. Thus, we decided using rating systems to help users assess potential products that they may purchase.
I believe that the balance of data you are providing enhances the UX and makes it seamless and less overwhelming. I am sure that a substantial proportion of users will enjoy making smart/eco-friendly decisions on their purchases, and most importantly, you are creating a community of users who share similar values and goals. That’s as invaluable as committing to the gym as a group, not by yourself (analogy). However, I am not sure I quite understood your answer to your partnership with the stores. Are they providing you with ESG details, or do you gather that data from another source?
Hi, Experience Design Team! I really enjoyed your OER and thought the layout and step-by-step guided process you presented made the material easy to understand and straightforward. I find Adobe XD a beneficial application when designing web pages and found myself nodding in agreement regarding the application’s ability to simulate the look and feel of functionality.
One aspect of your project I had some questions about and wondered if you came across any answers in your research was regarding the applications you listed as competitors to SmartBuy. Did you come across the reasons why Good Guide required a massive overhaul of its back-end data retrieval system or why Fair Shopping became defunct in your research? Did these discoveries impact any of the design processes behind SmartBuy?
Hi Graham, thanks for you comments. Good Guide found that, despite their best effort, they weren’t able to gather enough data about enough products to satisfy their users and their partnership with UL Environmental was designed to solve this problem. The latter is a unit of Underwriters Laboratories which is a huge global consumer research firm and the app is dormant while the two companies figure out how to mesh their respective expertise. As for Fair Shopping, we weren’t able to discover why they stopped operating; however, Good Guides problems did have an impact on our own design. We were hoping to have participating businesses provide information themselves about their own ESG profiles and then get this fact-checked, so-to-speak, by users, sharing their experiences sort of the way Wikipedia polices itself. The idea was that companies wouldn’t provide inaccurate information if they knew they were being monitored. But there’s no way to get around the fact that making vast amounts of accurate information accessible, point-of-purchase, is a challenge for everyone with this idea in mind.
Hi team!
I loved the layout of your course, it is visually pleasing, simple and effective! The progress bar is a great feature, I enjoyed knowing how much content I had left to explore. I believe your team managed to take on a very broad subject and make it interesting and informative! Great job!
Wonderful! Happy to hear you enjoyed it, Joelle!
Hi Experience Design Team,
Great work on your OER. The actual user experience of your website added credibility to the topic. You broke down a big topic into logical steps. It was easy to follow, and as someone who knew next to nothing on the topic, I learnt a lot without feeling overwhelmed. It grounded the ideas to have concrete examples in stage 1 and stage 2 from your own app. I am curious about the decision process of the general concept for the app: was this concept something one of the group members already had in mind? Or was it brainstormed together? I wonder because it is a great idea and follows experience design in that it is culturally relevant and a solution many are looking for. Well done team!
Hi Katherine, I’m glad you found the project helpful and easy to follow. For the stages in app design, these are pretty much standard across the industry and if you’re interested, you can follow up our research with that in the references section at the end of the Rise course; ‘Digital Resources for Learning’ by Daniel Churchill is especially helpful. This isn’t just for apps but Chapter 9 is devoted to mobile technologies. For the idea and design of the app itself, we just brainstormed that over WhatsApp and many Zoom sessions!
Hi Smart Buy Team,
This is an amazing idea! I would love access to an app that allows me to make conscious decisions about the product I am purchasing. Since coming back to Canada, one of the first things a noticed was the amount of different brands offering similar products. Where I lived overseas, it was generally one brand per product and while I was excited by the options I now had in Canada, the ability to differentiate between the brands was challenging. This app would solve those problems along with helping me make extend decisions about a particular company. I loved the flow of the presentation as well. I have been trying to break into the educational design world and I felt that your presentation gave a strong look at what would be expected while designing a product or concept from scratch. In particular, I really enjoyed the section that focused on the different stages of wire-frame to storyboard. Excellent job!
Hi Ben! Thanks for your feedback. I agree that there is a lot of choice in Canada. It can be overwhelming standing in a grocery/pharmacey aisles trying to deciper what brand to buy. Do we really need that much choice in deodorant? I’m happy to hear you like the Smart Buy app concept and you enjoyed the flow of the presentation. If you’re interested in getting into instructional/ e-learning design, I’m happy to chat with you offline!
Hello Smart Buy Team,
Thank you for the concise breakdown of creating an app. . I got a clear understanding of the steps taken from developing to launching. The app concept is reassuring as there many times when I am concerned about my purchase. However, the integration of engagement I found particularly helpful as a consumer. I find that shopping apps will provide reviews but not the opportunity to engage with shoppers; therefore, you do not know if the product is right for you. Access to social media platforms is another area that I found valuable as further contact with other consumers and feedback is available. And, allowing the consumer to provide their feedback beyond the app. For me, ESG is critical, and as an OER, I would love to see this app come to fruition. Informative information and Excellent work, Smart Buy Team!!!
Thanks so much, Anna! We would also love to see this app come to fruition but recognize that this would be no small endeavor. We would surely need sizeable funding and a tested approach for analyzing products and assigning ratings. We also need to consider whether we’d execute the ongoing product analysis internally, partner, or outsource the work. Lots more to think about. It would be so interesting to be a part of a project like this! Dream job!
Hello SMART BUY team.
I really appreciated how much detail and information went into your project. I particularly liked how you OER was structured to be a course that you can click through. Well done in taking students through the process of developing an app including the many stages. Your overall description of the process of designing and creating this app to appeal to an environmentally and socially minded consumer were well done. It was a really easy mini course to follow through different aspects of the design and development process. I was also able to understand how guiding questions and competitor design helps to create something truly unique with a busy landscape of apps. I also really liked how you included your individual flip cards that identified clear app essentials when designing that are imperative for each of you. In the end, you broke down the complexities of app development into an easy format and structure to really understand the process. Creation of apps like this allow for the consumer experience to bridge social consciousness and bring this directly into the shopping experiencing in effect changing our relationship with consumerism. Thanks again, and well done.
Hi Miguel! Really glad you enjoyed our project and found it useful and easy to follow. With the flip cards, at first we were going to just introduce ourselves in the usual way but everyone was really learning a lot of new skills and getting new ideas so we thought “Why don’t we share this with the class?” Your observation about changing the nature of consumerism is exactly right. We wanted to create a sharing, learning community that starts to think about the mundane act of shopping in a different way. This wasn’t just about buying fair trade rather than free trade or whatever although that’s a worthy goal and one good starting point; it was about changing our relationship with material things: money, products, consumer goods, and so on. Pretty ambitious for one app but there’s change in the air and synergy is a powerful force.
Great presentation! I appreciate how you applied creating a platform that enhances user experience. I have many friends who work in the UX industry, but I never really understood what they do. It is great to get some insight as to their thought process and some things to consider when building or improving an application. With regards to SMART BUY, I think there is potential. I remember when I did my undergraduate studies in Land and Food Systems at UBC, there was a huge focus on thinking where our supplies and food comes from and how it impacts our environment and economy. My friend recently introduced me to the app called “Too Good to Go” and the function of this app is to let you know what grocery store, bakery, or restaurants have goods that are about to expire and they sell it at a discount price. The purpose of this is to help reduce food waste. The other day she bought a bag of mixed fruits and vegetables for $5! With the recognition and growing awareness of how our supply chain works, SMART BUY would help educate the public even more!
Hi Sarah, thanks for your insight and encouragement. Increasingly, people are feeling the need, maybe I can even say the urgency, of digging deeper into where our goods and services come from and what the backstory is behind the things that sustain us. The concept of “Too Good to Go” sounds excellent: practical, relevant and manageable in scope. One problem with Smart Buy is that it might just be too much information to expect from a single app. As I mentioned in my response to Olivia (below), this was the challenge that Good Guide had and which they couldn’t overcome alone.
Great work SMART BUY team! What a great idea for an app, and I loved how you used that framework to illustrate what the app design process looked like for you. The storyboards and persona considerations were especially valuable for mapping out what your end-user’s experience would look like; as for measuring success, if you had to proceed with launching the application is there any retail demographic you would target first (convenience, grocery, mall etc.)? Also, is there any aspect of the user experience design process that you think would change when working with younger students in the K-12 system?
Hi Brendan, excellent questions. The main retail population we would be aiming first are independent stores within the local communities. We choose this demographic to be our first target group because these kind of stores would have already been more aligned with ESG values; at least in comparison with larger chainstore enterprises. These stores would be naturally inclined to cooperate with SMART BUY, SMART BUY also offers a great opportunity to celebrate and promote these stores who hold up these values. If SMART was targeted towards students K-12 system, we would probably be incorporating some curriculum content in the app to provided opportunity for students to learn more about ESG values and the students themselves can make the world a better place through their own actions. We would also incorporate more engagement features such as video and mini-games to decrease the learning barrier for the students.
Hello team,
Your presentation has great structure! I think Rise is a good platform for this kind of project. I loved who you linked each step to a concrete example of your app. Your storyboard’s final version does not need explanation; it is indeed an excellent way to present the app’s functionality. The main takeaway for me was the golden rule for user experience. Otherwise, building an app is a new subject to me, and I am afraid of not having the competencies to do it. I’d appreciate it if you could suggest user-friendly and intuitive software to test some ideas. I’m also curious about data extraction for the improvement of the app. Is there any technical knowledge required?
Thank you,
Deisy,
Thank you for your feedback. I was unfamiliar with Rise prior to this project and we enjoy using it to frame our work. We used a website called Whimsical for the design of the wireframe and it is an easy to use tool for designing apps. Personally, I’ve used other mock-up tools before, however none as seamless and intuitive as this one. This tool does not require coding or the use of cumbersome spread sheets which makes it easy to recommend it for younger learners wanting to explore app design. I’d be interested to hear what other people have used in the past and if there are any recommendations.
In terms of data extraction, the app would generate data based on the information companies share about their sustainability. Our idea is that it works in a company’s best interest to be transparent and forthcoming. Geographical data would also be collected about the use of the app and the products purpose, which would in turn allow for fine tuning and adjustments. In terms of technical data required, the execution of an app such as this would require technical knowledge on the back end to ensure it maintained integrity and was functioning as intended. Additionally, mobile learning apps require responsiveness and co-construction between the user and the tool. Areas of tension need to be attended to with the intention that the tool evolves along with the users that are utilizing it.
Nice job SMART BUY team. You definitely had a challenging subject matter, and you were successful in your execution. I really enjoyed the design of your OER, and the applied nature of the delivery (it would have been really interesting to see more of the inner-workings of the focus groups and design iterations similar to what you did with the storyboard and wireframe description).
As a partial aside, although I like the concept of your app, the cynic in me wonders if such an app could get buy-in from retailers and/or manufacturers without some sort of monetization. It might work if it was a user-driven ESG rating system, and worked more like a platform such as Yelp.
Hi Sam! Thanks so much for your feedback. We actually recorded most of our “focus”/Saturday group discussions; however, towards the end of our project, we recognized that the storyboards showed the evolution of the design more succinctly. We wanted to include the storyboards with our track changes and comments which would have been more authentic (revealing more detail), but we weren’t sure how to capture a crisp picture with all the comments and pull it into the RISE program. Regarding your comments on buy-in from retailers and manufacturers, I think we would receive buy-in from any retailer that wanted to be recognized as an organization that supports sustainable management and products. And if the retailer is known as an ESG partner, that would increase their potential to draw like-minded consumers and increase the potential for consumers to spread the word about their “SMART” store and what it offers. It’s an inexpensive way for a retailer to promote their business. Manufacturers would pay attention when they notice a consumer shift away from their product in favor of another (recognizing the app would have to be very popular by this point). I think manufacturers would want to know what criteria the Smart App uses to rate their products, if it’s fair, and perhaps how their product rating compares to their competitors.
Great job Experience Design team! I really appreciate how you designed your OER as a mini-course. What program did you use to make your project? Something that struck me while working through the project is similarities between course design and app design. For example, 3 out of 4 of the guiding principles listed on the overview page could easily be adapted to designing a workshop. I also found similarities between the pre-design stage and starting your own business (ex. environmental scans, comparisons with competitors, targeting customer demographics). This question is a bit out of the realm of design but if Smart Buy was a real app, how would you find the information to rate each product? That seems like a huge undertaking to find this kind of information and translate it to the ESG rating. Does that happen in the development stage?
Hi Olivia! The program we used to frame the app building process is called Rise. It’s very user friendly, and as you’ve noticed, makes a clean attractive presentation. I would definitely recommend it for creating a course. I agree the the design process looks familiar, I guess because, as with any segmented project, carefully evaluating all of the variables that you have to get right at the beginning can save you a world of grief later on. It’s much easier to fix something early on rather than in development, so good preparation is really important. Your question about where we will get the data is an excellent one and, in fact, it’s what tripped up GoodGuide. They had been doing their own original research at considerable expense but were still getting complaints that the app’s penetration wasn’t deep or broad enough. That’s why in 2020 they shut down temporarily and partnered with UL Environmental which is a well-established consumer research firm. They two are going to collaborate with UL Environmental providing the back-end. Getting the data was always going to be the hard part but we hoped to mitigate this somewhat by getting participating businesses to self-disclose.
Hi Gary and Olivia. I want to say that I had the same questions in mind when I was examining the OER. Data collection and classification seems like a daunting task, but Gary’s response clarifies the issue. Thanks.
SMART BUY team, my goodness! I loved the layout and flow of your OER. It was concise, clear, intuitive, and aesthetically appealing. I also appreciated the progress bar – this feature held me accountable and made me want to complete the course (ie. it played a major role in holding my attention while I explore every aspect of your OER). As for SMART BUY itself, I appreciate the niche you are marketing to and the philosophical goals the app aims to meet. I was also interested in the research on the personas (that while Gen Z is the most socially/environmentally conscious generation, the Millennials and Gen X are the ones who can [literally] afford to be influenced by the Smart Buy guiding principles). Designing this course while simultaneously going through the process of designing an app was a valuable way to demonstrate the process. I truly can’t say enough good things. Just so impressed.
In general, what stage of the app design do you think is the most challenging for someone creating an app (pre-design, design, development, support)? In your experience of designing SMART BUY which guiding question was hardest to answer (What does the app do? Who will use it? What technology will be used? Or How will success be measured?).
Hi Tegan! Thanks so much for the feedback and great questions. We think the most challenging stage of the app development process was the first stage: Pre-design. In this stage, we took our blue-sky ideas, narrowed them down, and answered specific questions that would define what the app is and how it would be used. It’s a critical stage that lays the foundation for whether the app will be successful or not. If we miss the mark on questions such as: who the customer is, the problem we’re solving, what value the app brings, and our competitors, the app will struggle on the market. A mistake at this stage would be hard to resolve later on in the development process. As a team, it took us time and collaboration to complete this stage. One of the many challenging tasks was to pinpoint who the potential users would be and build personas.
Not going through the app-building process myself, I imagined the pre-design stage to be the most difficult – not being a particularly creative person, this is the stage I often struggle with when starting a project. Totally different question… may I ask what site you used to design your webpage? Is it Amazon? I have spent some time using Google to search, with no luck. Also, whichever site you used, could multiple team members collaborate on it at the same time? Thank you 🙂
Hi Teagan! We used Articulate Rise. You can get a 60 day free trial and collaborate with one other person (but can change that other person whenever you need to). It’s an easy, simple authoring tool that looks good on desktop and mobile devices! Go check it out (and no, I don’t work for Articulate!).
I agree with you Elizabeth! It is worth trying it.
Ha, Elizabeth… your last line, very cute. Thank you for the new application (Deisy, I value you backing it up)! A partner and I are going to try it out in our other course. Again, great OER.
Yay Experience Design Team! I learned so much about your topic and it was presented in such a clear and concise way! I loved how you included each of your favourite user experience comments on the flip side of your avatar cards; these testimonials really indicated feature ideas that stuck with me throughout your presentation. I also loved that you gave us exemplars for each developmental phase as well as answers to guiding questions. This made it much easier to understand the parts and parcel of the entire app design process. Your considerations and recommendations during this process such as examing reviews of competing apps and deciding how the success of the app will be measured were much appreciated as I hadn’t seriously considered these things before. I’ve also worked with wireframes before on another MET project, but this is the first time I’ve looked at storyboards for app building. It was so interesting and I valued your examples. Getting a stronger idea of how to build an app that focuses on a successful user experience is very useful to me as a consumer because I have greater expectations for what they can do for me; the user experience is the ultimate factor in the success of an app. I would have liked to see some more details or deeper scenarios about Stage 4 (Support). Your presentation and videos were excellent! Thanks, Team!
KJ
Hi Kendal, we are glad that you find this project helpful. To be honest with you, this was the first time that I have done a story board too. There was an even rougher “rough draft” of the story board that we did before we decided the format of the storyboard for the project. It was interesting to experiment with these different formats for app design and many great ideas came out of these creation processes. We have realized and learned many things through this process. We feel that this creation process was just as important if not more important so than the final product itself. Every step of the transition new ideas sparked. As you pointed out, we also wanted to add some more to Stage 4. However, that stage needs users who had already been using the app for a period of time which we unfortunately do not have. However, in the future, it would definitely be a part that we would like to add more to.
Ooh! I love that you brought up that the process was more important than the end product. I wonder if you all LEARNED just as much or even more from the process than the end product as well!
Ahhh, it makes sense that you’d need user input for a more comprehensive Stage 4 exemplar.
Hell Experience Design Team.
Wow.
What an exceptionally designed presentation, prototype and supporting videos! No pressure at all eh, with a topic like this. 🙂 Well done. For some reason, although I recognize this is an important topic, I find it difficult to consider within the context of open/mobile learning. To help process my experience, (of your experience…design?) I thought it might be useful to reread the Frontiers Poll: 1. “Experience Design… is about optimizing the usefulness of the real world around you.” (David Vogt) – I love how one of the central functions of the app you designed concerns ‘learning’ about a company and their products, however this was not presented as a central tenant of “what the app will do” but is instead embedded in the experience of using the app. (Dare I borrow a term from gamification/game-based learning and say, the app elicits “stealth learning”?) Is this increasingly seamless connection between our mobile experiences and learning experiences the result of excellent ‘experience design’ combined with ever improving technology? Or are there other considerations too? 2. “It’s about the experience of the user, the learner…It’s without a doubt experience design that not only improves accessibility of resources, efficiency of learning, and ultimately what it means to be a learner in the this day and age.” (Leon Lam) It’s amazing to recognize that every mobile app has likely gone through the process your team has outlined. I think Leon’s statement about ‘what it means to be a learner in this day and age’ is helpful for thinking about this topic, because what it means to be a learner is part of what it means to have a mobile device in my pocket, everywhere I go, and what experiences it allows me to unlock, whether in the classroom, or trying to be a better citizen who supports sustainable business practices.
Hi Sally,
Thanks for pointing out that ambiguity, it’s something that our team had to give considerable thought to.
“Experience Design is not about optimizing the usability of a device or an application, it is about optimizing the usefulness of the real world around you.”
The design of this project references a real-world context and addresses a real-world need; that is people who care deeply about sustainability and want to know more about the stores they go to and the products they purchase. Through collective effort, the design of this app allows people to create an affinity space for people who share similar interests and values in sustainability where they can build collective knowledge based in local communities. As users walk around, they can pull up the map and see what stores are participating in the Smart Buy partnership. Users can also see how other people rate products, for example, a product might have a high ESG rating, but be ranked low by consumers in their preference ratings. The preference ratings are indicated by the My Value Ranking which adds social value through the pooling consumer experiences.
The shopper is also an experiencer and creator of new knowledge for this collective community. The function of Smart Buy is to scaffold a community learning experience. This is in line with Vygotsky’s social cultural constructivist theory in which learning is a social and experiential process.