Synopsis:
With a team of 5 including myself, we were tasked to follow a dragon boat team in Vancouver. By interviewing them, deploying cultural probes, and learning about their lifestyle and work habits, we aim to develop an application that would help them [at that time, unsure of what, but this becomes clear in the later stages of the project].
Our cultural probes contained short activities that a few members of the team can do throughout the week. These activities were short, fun, and nothing too mind-boggling. However, each activity had questions about the individuals lifestyle, work habits, training methods, and morale. This allowed us to piece together a rough idea of who our participants were. We then conducted formal interviews asking about the answers they wrote in the probe. From there, we constructed personas to base our designs around.
A low fidelity prototype of how we envisioned the home page. Because there were a lot of information, we felt that a tile system would improve scan-ability
For our final prototype, we eventually moved away from the tile system as it gave the impression that the data was accessible. Splitting the screen also allowed for quick digestion of solo vs team statistics.
Comparing an individual to the team statistic was an important feature that our participants stressed on. This is another screen depicting how team data might be visualized.
A final concept for visualizing and understanding team synchronization was the triangulation of how individuals held their paddles and when the paddle blade was fully submerged in the water. This would allow individuals and coaches to see where paddlers were out of sync over time.
The cultural probe we gave to each of our participants at the beginning of the project consisted of a camera, small sketchbook, and a few questionnaires.
Learning Outcomes:
With a tight deadline for deliverables, we concluded that the team actually needed a shift in staff in order to address some of the issues they had. However, as the second half of our course required us to create a digital application of sorts, we felt that making a team workout log/checklist would help keep the member's training schedule on track.
Creating a journey framework that was based on our participants helped us understand their work habits, training regime and life-style. Using the information from our user research and cultural probes allowed us to effectively design for the dragon boat team. Although we were not able to fix the problem we identified, we were able to provide an alternate solution. Again, understanding the users and their workflows are extremely important.