User Experience Design for MobileRoss Belmont

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Designing for Mobile: Our Process• Get Out of the Building

• Define Success by Writing the Script

• Build the First Prototype

• Iterate Until It’s Great

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Overview of the app• Our client provides physician staffing services to emergency

departments (EDs) across the country

• They wanted to dramatically increase the quality and quantity of feedback on physician performance

• Their baseline was single-digit response rate

• They had a vision to deploy iPads to the ED and get feedback in near real-time

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Getting Out of the Building: Customer Research• As soon as you reach an initial consensus on the product

concept, perform a site visit to a location where the app will be used.

• You need to build an understanding of a setting to gauge how the app will fit within that setting.

• The rest of your team wants to understand this fit, too!

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Getting Out of the Building: Customer Research

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Getting Out of the Building: Customer Research

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

For More Information• Read Rapid Contextual Design by

Holtzblatt, Wendell and Wood

• It’s a detailed playbook for site visits, interviewing and how to process the output

• It also provides a process for small, medium and large budgets

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Define Success by “Writing the Script”• Write a plausible story starring your customer succeeding at

something with your app.

• Ideally, the story will take place in the setting you studied.

• In contrast, don’t ship features that don't connect in a coherent way for the user. “Stick to the script” and leave out what doesn't fit.

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Customer Research Gives You the Setting• In the ED, treatment rooms have a TV to

help pass the (extra) time.

• Sharing this detail with the project team made it “click” for them there’s time to give feedback in the ED setting.

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Our “Script” as a Storyboard

There...that’ll holdyour ankle in place

Your prescription will be ready soon...in the mean

time, can we get yourfeedback on today’s visit?

TAP...TAP...TAP...DONE.

Here you go!

Thanks!

20 MINUTES LATER...

Thanks foreverything!

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

For More Information

Make the story visualDevelop the story/scenario

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Build the First Prototype• Do this as quickly as possible, since you will

change the UI, probably in a significant way.

• Luckily, the new Mobile Packs make it easy to deliver something clickable quickly.

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Our Experience• We tested our first concept with an elderly

family member

• He had never used an iPad and was confused as to how to scroll

• Since there would be many elderly patients providing feedback, we reworked the core navigation mechanism

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

For More Information• Read Designing Mobile Interfaces by

Hoober and Berkman

• It provides well-documented solutions to many common design problems

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Iterate Until It’s Great• Iterate on the prototype with representative or actual users.

• It’s like preparing for the SATs:

• You don’t want to go in “cold.” Some kind of practice is critical.

• Feedback will improve performance, but only if it’s specific.

• Should I work on essay writing, or reading comprehension?

• Many external resources are available to yield improvements. The key is planning for the fact that it won’t be perfect the first time out.

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Schedule Time to Iterate: Don’t Do This

Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Schedule Time to Iterate: Do This Instead

Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

“Lean Startup” Has Popularized Iteration

Image courtesy @clevergirl and @katerutter of LUXr.co

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

Our Experience• We made 9 prototypes with various degrees of tweaks.

© 2013 Appiphony, LLC All rights reserved.

For More Information

Polishing the interfaceIterating with a team