Crash Course

Objective: Redesign a classmate’s experience at St. Norbert, while learning the basic stages of the design process. This partner activity included interviewing each other, building and sharing solutions, and reflecting on how to refine our creations.

Engaging with a real person made me think differently about the prototype I wanted to make. Instead of only thinking about what I would like or dislike, I took their thoughts into consideration, so it would be suited to their needs.

Showing unfinished work to my partner was frustrating at first. I do not like to deliver or present an unfinished piece, because it doesn’t match or translate to the finished product I had initially pictured.

The pace through the cycles was quick and I constantly felt rushed, so I struggled to come up with quality ideas off the top of my head. My normal routine with projects is to spend a lot of time brainstorming and creating thumbnails of different compositions until I find the right one. After that, I am comfortable moving forward and working at a steady pace.

With the crash course activity, I created a logo for the face of an app for my partner, and if I could go back, I would have liked to create something more trendy or eye-catching than the generic design I went with. Ultimately, I think altering my thinking in the ideate stage would have benefited the final product more and met my partner’s wants.

This is the face of the app I created for my classmate to improve her time management with course homework and studying.

This is the contents of the app, TM (Time Management) Calculate. The user plugs in their schedule and the app calculates a recommended amount of time to study or do homework depending on the course.