Our target group's needs and wants were defined by creating empathy maps. These maps defined our target group's present and future: What are they listening, seeing and thinking right now, what do they want in the future?
Empathy maps can be found free online. I create these two from my interviews.
What are we offering?
Our digital solution was an interface to an application that is essentially a knowledge bank, peer support and activity calendar in one: We wanted students to know more about life skills needed to sustain a balanced life not overburdened by too much of one thing. The interface grew quite complicated, but we were able to scope it down, and keep asking us the essential questions: is this usable, and is this needed?
Landing page for the application: We created a page for logging in, and the credentials could be fetched from school database, or created with user's own e-mai.
Pop-up window for gauging feelings after the log-in window with several features that the students could use to communicate with teachers. We also had the option of not sharing the feeling as seen with the checkmark box, as well as choosing a teacher to share feeling with.
Feedback and site loading pop-up.
Student interface main page. Here student can perform all the tasks the application allows: Student can easily see how many life skill events they need to attend this semester and what kind of life skill events are coming up. Student also sees at glance how their month is going with the calendar visualising their feelings. These were primary priority functions. Chat and blog posts can be found in the knowledge bank, and treated as secondary priority.
Teacher main page interface: Here students who want to share their progress with teacher are seen, and anonymous students are shown as well: If the teacher is the primary teacher for a specific class, they can tailor the view to show their class only. Teachers also host life skills events, and their calendar and events can be seen at first glance. Teachers also have access to the chat and blog function.
Detail page on life skill events, with event listing and tagged categories on the left. Clicked event will show on the right side with details.
Blog post page detail.
Student-teacher chat detail page.
Student-only chat page detail.
What could we have done differently? We got lots of feedback on our solution, especially the technical and creative parts(all my doing) as well as questioning on if this is useful or needed. I can tell that the scope of our project grew, due to having members in the team with ability to think larger. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and important insights were made due to considering all aspects of our solution.
Hopefully these posts have given you a glimpse of UX-designers skills. I was pretty amazed by my team, and by the honesty and sincerity of the people I interviewed. We all do want to feel better, and hopefully I can work on projects that create a more sustainable future.
-Erja
PS. Here's some pictures from our visit to Mrs Electronica Center in Linz, and from the airport, waiting to get on my flight to home <3
PPS: I have to confess: I ate only one schnitzel, and it was a chicken schnitzel at our farewell dinner. That counts, I think..
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