This week has been surprisingly calm. We planned out our third sprint, had an amazing UX workshop with Marco and got right to work executing tasks. It’s like our team went through our honeymoon phase (aka the first sprint, we were all lovey-dovey with our ideas and each other), our post-honeymoon phase (aka the second sprint, an awkward rough patch when reality sunk in) and the post-post honeymoon phase (aka now, where we’ve adjusted and have gotten used to the idea of doing mundane tasks together like laundry on Friday nights).
Some of our user stories.
On Monday, Gijs helped us out with our sprint planning from the get-go, which was real helpful. We created eight distinct user stories from the perspectives of each our area of expertise. They ranged from “As a creative coder, how can I display the collected data in a dynamic way?” to “As a researcher, how can I involve our target audience more in our prototype experiments?” After writing down at least a thousand-and-one tasks (as per usual), we shifted several of them to the Product Backlog on the Scrum Board, as this sprint is minus two days (Happy Easter, y’all).
The Dutchtub: Classic example of great UX design.
On Wednesday Marco gave a UX workshop where he gave an impeccable presentation on designing experiences that are self-defining, and invoke happiness and motivation. We also learned about the relevance of emotions to design, and how moods, sentiments and emotional traits are quite different from emotions themselves (which are brief and intense). #feels.
Fleshing out our person: The charismatic Mike.
After Marco’s talk, Felipe took over and we did a quick activity where we learned the importance of filtering our user-centered research into models and maps (read: more stuff that is, well, useful). We took one of our personas (Mike) and tried to understand how he would experience the prototype we are currently working from what we understand about him, no assumptions or embellishments whatsoever. Zip. Nada.
Shreya’s Spectacular Sketches.
As for our tasks, Shreya and Orlando have been working to understand the spatial attributes of Canvas (at Volkshotel) and OBA Linnaeusstraat, and how can this understanding can be incorporated into our design. They’ve been looking at how users move through the spaces and this shapes their experience of the space. Oh, and Orlando is creating digital models of the space for reference. Capital A for Awesome.
Project model, brainstorming fun.
Lisanne and Nikhil have been figuring out the visual side of things, starting with the project model (above), so that our concept is easily understood (read: translate everything to “mom language”). We’re still working with maps, but this time, our prototype is going to feature landmarks from Oost and a sprinkle of generative design, with Nikhil delving into Processing for the first time (so. exciting). We like to dream big. Are we biting off more than we can chew? Maybe… Stay tuned.
