Ideation Tool from Cooper Hewitt Museum API

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This project is an ongoing pursue around the question of how to overcome a creative block? Partnered with Lutfiadi Rahmanto, we started out scribbling, sketching and describing the problem to better understand what it meant for each of us and how do we scope this problem and usually respond to it.

UX Research

From the first session we were able to narrow the idea onto a determined goal: A tool to aid inspiration in the creative process. This led us to consider various things around the sought scenario and allowed us to start asking other creatives around this. We sought to better understand –qualitatively– how creatives describe a creative block and more importantly how is creative block overcome? From this session we were also able to reflect on how to aid that starting point of ideating, often a hard endeavor. A resonating answer in the end, was through linking non-related words, concepts or ideas.

We also researched two articles with subject matter experts about Creative Block and Overcoming It ("How to Break Through Your Creative Block: Strategies from 90 of Today's Most Exciting Creators" and "Advice from Artists on Hot to Overcome Creative Block, Handle Criticism, and Nurture Your Sense of Self-Worth"). Here we found a collage between our initial hypothesis with additional components such as remix, from Jessica Hagy's wonderful analogical method of overcoming her creative block by randomly grabbing a book and opening it a random page and linking "the seed of a thousand stories". Another valuable insight was creating space of diverted focus from the task at hand generating the block. We also found a clear experience-design directive for our app, to balance between constrain –structured scrambled data from the API– and freedom –imaginative play–.

Brief, Personas and Scenarios

After validating our intuitive hypotheses on how to address the problem through the contextual inquiries and online articles we came up with a solid Design Brief:

Encourage  a diverted focus where people are able to create ideas by scrambling data from the Cooper Hewitt's database into random ideas (phrases). 

Through this research we created seven different behavior patterns and mapped them onto this two-axis map, that defines the extent to which personas would behave between casual/serious and unique/remix. 

For a more detailed description of these archetype behaviors visit this link

This enabled us to create our guiding design path through what Lola Bates-Campbell describes as the MUSE. An outlier persona to direct and answer the usual nuances behind designing, in this case, our mobile application tool to aid Mae Cherson in her creative block. We determined her goals and thus her underlying motivations, what she usually does –activities– during her creative environment and how she goes around between small and greater creative blocks in her working space. We also describe her attitudes towards this blocking scenario and how her feelings entangle whenever seeking for inspiration. There were some other traits  determined as well that can be reach in more detail through this link.  Overall we crafted this Muse as a reference point for creating an inspirational experience for the selected archetypes –The Clumsy Reliever and The Medley Maker–.

Engagement

Parallel to the archetypes mapping, we began thinking how to engage our audience –Artists, Designers, Writers, Thinkers, Makers, Tinkerers, all poiesis casters–. Soon we realize the opportunity of captivating our audience through a game-like interaction. A gameplay that requires simple gestures and encourages discoverability. Some of the games we took as reference are Candy Crush and 2 Dots. Two simple games that have out-stand for their heavily and widespread engagement.

Wireframe Sketches

By having research cues and possible game-like affordances in mind there's proliferous space to weave tentative design solutions. Hence we made a couple whiles to sketch layouts, concepts, poetic interactions and nonsense infractions.

On the other side we created sense and sought a balance between amusement and feasibility. At the end of this session we came up with three Design Layout Concepts and general Affordances (call to interaction): Linking, Discovering and Dragging.

Test Insight

From these concepts we started making interactive prototypes. While creating the Discovering prototype, we realize people's intuitive mental model beneath a Candy Crush-like interaction did not match with our design intent, and trying to match it resulted overly complicated and forced. This is why we created prototypes for the Linking and Dragging concepts.

Prototypes

Another prototype explores the underlying preference between text-driven inspiration and visually-driven inspiration. While testing these prototypes we realize some people tent to feel more inspired by imaging the words from a text, and other people feel more inspired by visual queues. This prototype allows both explorations.

The next step is to select one gameplay interaction from our user tests and sintactically address the text data from the API. 

This is another interaction mode –Remixing Mode–, thought after Katherine's valuable feedback on our final prototype that can be accessed in this link.

Counter UX —Physical + Mobile—

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Concept

The general idea came from the hula-hoop toy as a cyclical activity. After some thought and happy accidents, it was clear that a scaled down version would be more suitable. As a rapid prototyping strategy, the use of glowing necklaces came in pretty handy. It not only scales up quite well to the assignment's brief, but it communicates clearly the data visualization of the activity's tentative feedback.

Insight from User Test

After some user tests, it was clear that people intuitively spin the ring in either way –clockwise and counterclockwise–, which means that the overall task of counting should be designed in line to this ambivalence. 

Design Principle

This is the reason behind the two sides (white and black) of the object. When spinning the object with the white side up, it counts and whenever the black is up it basically undo the counts. The general idea is to see the circle light up in relation the the goal's progression, being counting up or down. The way to set up the mode and quantity are through embedded knobs as shown in the third illustration. 

Digital Translation

Having a prototyped experience makes the UX mobile sketching easier. Nevertheless, these diagrams make the overall panoramic view of the experience much clearer. 

Designing Interactions

Translating this physical experience into a digitally mobile one could go two ways. In the end, the chosen alternative will rely on user tests. The initial idea is to spin the mobile device to count and spin it the other way to undo the count. However, spinning the physical device might not be intuitively enough in mobile applications. The other hypothetical alternative is through a circular swiping gesture, consistently upon the whole app's interaction.

Airplane Food Order

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The ideal experience behind an order in a plane –maybe elsewhere as well– would be to be suggested food pairing by correlating the person's Agenda, Rest Prediction through Biometric sensed data, and a Medical history. Before creating the wireframe, I deconstructed the information into a Hierarchical Task Analysis to have a better sense of the drill down flow of the overall UI

There's 3 sub-levels involved in the order flow, except for Coffee which takes two additional (type of milk and sweetness). By creating this, I was able to decide on micro interactions such as reducing the choices to Yes or No answers whenever a refined choice is needed. For instance,  Water with or without ice. This allows for an overall consistent UI flow.

The overall circle layout is the a tentative proposal towards cyclic rituals behind meals.

Health Applications –Pain Tracking–

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We chose two mobile applications that ideally will help patients collect meaningful information about their symptoms and share them with their doctors in way that they can emit better recommendations. Thus, we looked at three overall assets in the applications: first that the use of these apps don't generate an additional frustration over their health, second that what they are registering can be is easily inputed and third that what's being registered could be useful for the doctor. After some research in the abundant alternatives of applications, we chose RheumaTrack and Pain Coach, even though we discarded Track React and Catch My Pain. Overall, we sought the best ones to ultimately decide which of the two was better. Its fair to say that both have useful and usable affordances, but RheumaTrack does add aggregate value that Pain Coach doesn't. 

Overall we realized RheumaTrack is a better application because of one particular service or function, which is the way people input their joint pain. This interface in a nutshell is a meaningful (useful & usable) way for both patient and doctor of visualize and recording the pain condition in a really predictable manner. The overall process of adding a new entry (pain, medication and activity), though a bit clamped is clearer than others and pretty straightforward. This dashboard follows the conventional standards in regards of Mobile GUI design, where items and affordances are perceivable (easily readable) and predictable, and the overall navigation feedback. I could realize two simple UX elements that this could improve, which is whenever adding a "New Check" there's no progress bar to predict how long is this task going to take. The "Activity" interface could visually improve in various points . First, generating better contrast between the data recorded and the layers of pain intensity to enhance perceivability (readability) and the tags' date-format can be confusing. Nevertheless, the overall purpose of the "Activity" service or function is very useful for doctors.

Object Reflections

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This backpack caught my sight immediately and I’ve carried it since –eight years ago–. An outer clean minimalist silhouette tainted with coal and dark black communicated elegant simplicity. The continuity from the lateral-surrounding body-fabric onto the handles reinforced this minimalist perception and added structure and endurance. Its outer simplicity up to date disguises its inner complexity of vast services, to the extent of pockets often passing unnoticed. Various adventurous stories with its rogue laptop compartment have crafted a valueless feeling in my mind. I’m still discovering alternate uses for the side and handle straps such as water bottle holder, umbrella drainer or pen/marker holders. And besides its impeccable impermeability this awesome backpack is awfully comfortable.

This other object keeps tormenting our daily experiences, even though there have been solutions crafted by now. In a nut shell, this control frustrates people by cognitively loading us with excessive affordances (buttons). It's fair to clarify that the tasks all these affordances tackle may address interesting user needs. However, the frequency at which these needs may arise don't make up for this cognitive load. For example, as a beginner user, I don't know what are the A,B,C and D buttons for. Even though they may not be significantly big in comparison to other buttons, the fact that they have color distracts the overall reading from the control layout. A good solution already in market is Apple TV's control. It's consistent with its laptop controls created back in the mid 00s, allowing people to learn it easily and fast.