capstone
Case Study
MODE: Rideshare
sketches & Guerrilla Usability tests
Guerrilla Usability tests are always moments that bring you back down to earth--and finally allow you to begin get hands-on, seeing the project with new eyes and beginning to materialize the design as it will act in the real world. Looking back I’m happy that I gave attention to detail at the level I did, in this case, many early experiments I had proved useful in later user testing. However, that luck doesn’t always hold: good design paces its creative energy in increments, so that we don’t spend time and resources detailing explorations until the basic directions have been validated.
It’s a common temptation that I gave into, allowing myself to spend too much time getting excited about sketching the details. The excitement of translating hours and hours of research and analysis into screens can easily allow us to indulge in personal creative escapades. But the creative task at hand is to think through the details that the user needs to navigate the design and achieve their goals in the most delightful and satisfying way. Patiently rendering details in increments allows us to keep the users themselves as our guides, rather than our speculations about what the users are like.
Here’s some of the more detailed sketches for the core function: defining preferences and hailing a ride:
Below you’ll see the onboarding process that reflects a new focus: streamlining the sketches themselves, and delivering the whole red-route rather than taking an opportunity to be an artisté. A final word of advice: it’s a simple idea, but in fact just using smaller sketches for each screen forces you to prioritize features and reduce the extreme details (read: clutter), of your initial sketches.
Wireframes