This is a school project where I was the UX lead of my team, trying to develop the prototype of an app that could best help the lives of working adults, living in a "covid-world".

Team: 6 members

My role: UX Lead

Project Duration: 6 Weeks

FunSkillz UX Project - The Future of Work

The Project Brief

We used the famous 5 stage Design thinking process for this UX Project which consists of the following below:

Empathize: research your users' needs.
Define: state your users' needs and problems.
Ideate: challenge assumptions and create ideas.
Prototype: start to create solutions.
Test: try your solutions out.

STEP 1:

Empathize.

My Team and I conducted 5 empathy interviews, targeting office workers in Singapore and asked them what were their experience on working during lockdown and under covid-measures.

One of the empathy interviews being conducted

After the 5 empathy Interviews, we wrote down the responses, analyzed and came up with an empathy map. The Empathy map was created to remind us on what we needed to solve, in relation to the project brief that was given to us - "The Future of Work".

Upon creating the Empathy Map, we created a persona that best describes the perfect user of the prototype that will be creating for. This persona has to have similar goals, frustrations and motivations as the ones listed in the empathy map.

The created Empathy Map

The chosen Persona

STEP 2:

Define.

Based on our analysis of the empathy Interviews, we wrote down the 5 WHYs, and 5W1H. This led us to come out with the problem statement for our UX project.

5 WHYs to failure to achieve effective collaboration?

Employee is busy
Employee does not know how to use the new tools
Employee don’t know how to plan
Employee has no trust in the system and people working with
Employee is unsure of their work progress

The How-Might-We (HMW) statement was then formed to best open up brainstorm and other Ideation sessions. HMW opens up to Ideation sessions where my team and I can explore ideas that can help us solve the design challenge.

We also wrote down the 5W1H – Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. The answers to these six questions reveal the context of use – the people, their tasks, their tools and technology, and the environment in which they will be using the product that will be prototyping.

STEP 3:

Ideate.

My Team and I did "Crazy Eights" where we each sketched 8 ideas in 8 minutes on what our app should contain and look like. Upon the end of the 8th and final sketch, we took some time to look through the sketches that we made and presented the sketch to each other out aloud.

The Crazy Eight Sketches individual done by my teammates

Finally we did a Dot voting where each of our members were given 6 dots and to paste our dots on the sketches which which should include in our storyboarding in the prototype phase

The sketch with the most number of votes

STEP 4:

Prototype.

Based on the results of the Dot Vote from the previous sprint, my team and I did the storyboarding on Figma, where we put our creative skills to the test!

The initial prototype done using Figma.

In the end we created the Prototype using Axure RP 7 Software as we believed it has a much easier learning curve to use.

STEP 5:

Test.

We conducted user testing of the prototype that we had created to 5 other users who also belong in the targeted market of working adults, who are currently working in offices in Singapore.

We recorded the results of the interview and analyzed them so that we can make improvements to the app.

Testing the final prototype with a user.

Summary & Thinking Process

Overall, I felt very overwhelmed at such a large scale project to be completed in under 6 weeks, but also excited at the same time as this was my first time being the UX lead and guiding my fellow classmates to complete this project.

Although the final prototype that we developed was not up to expectation, I am pleased to say that each of my team members did give their best throughout these 6 weeks. We definitely has problems as it was also our first time working on a UX project with this large of a scale.

In conclusion, it was definitely an eye-opener to what working as a UX designer is all about and there is so many things that we have to research about, especially in the early stage such as empathy interviews, and the problem statement. The most important take away for me is to always re-visit your problem statement after every stage, so that the team does not lose focus of what is the main goal of the entire project, and to always think based on the user's perspectives and goals.