Step I: Conducted Client interviews to gather requirements.
This helped us understand the project and client's expections. All the interviews were recorded for future reference.
Step II: Developed user story Excel Sheet.
In this process, client requirements were broken down into small user tasks. Each task was prioritized according to its importance to the client, effeorts and time required. This was iteratively validated with the client.
Step III: User testing, Brainstorming and user interviews with the present website.
The present wireframes were shown to the users and they were assigned tasks to be performed. For each task they had to think aloud the process flow. They were later interviewed for the problems encountered and suggestions.
Step IV: Wireframes and Prototypes were developed using the software Balsamiq and Jetstarp respectively.
These design artifacts helped in communicating with client and user. They were again tested with the users.
Design I:
Requirement:
Home Screen
User Study:
User base include people with low technological skills.
Design:
1. Formal design pertaining the aim of the website.
2. Highly functionality driven.
3. No extra information to distract users.
Design II
Requirement:
Information form
User Study:
1. User base included people with low technical skills as well. Example: senior citizen and school kids.
2. Event description was a subjective topic. Forcing users to follow standard formats can lead to loss of users.
Design:
1. The essential fields were designed to stick to standard formats for database consistency and information retrieval.
2. Large text boxes for non essential fields, making them flexible to formats,
3. Made the design to look formal and serious (pertaining to the seriousness of the topic).
Design III:
Requirements:
Interactive Visualization for the Event Data.
User study:
1. Users need a way to get information overview.
2. Commonly used filters were location, type and time of the event.
Design:
1. Heatmap to give an overview of the event density across different locations.
2. Slideshow to display events across timeframe.
3. A table to give the important information about different events or seeach results.
Design IV:
Requirement:
Confirmation Page
User Study:
1. Users need feedback to know the process has ended.
Design:
1. Confirmation message to indicate the end of process.
2. Inform user of the next step in the process is review by the administrators.
Link: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~yawenl2/RacialViolenceArchiveMockup/index.html
