Information Architecture
In this course at UCSD with Prof. David Kirsh, we worked in small groups to complete three medium-sized projects focusing on interface architecture and usability heuristics.
Timeline
Jan - March (2016)
Goals
- Learn what makes a site "good" and what weakens its usability by performing usability evaluations on current sites
- Understand the influence of layout and architecture on user comprehension
- Design navigation through a prototype music app
Play with the prototype app in Invision here.
Roles
Usability research/interviews, documentation, prototype development
Wireframe Redesign
In another assignment, we redesigned a prototype for the University of Alaska, Anchorage desktop website. We performed first (found here) and second level (and here) competitive analyses of five other university websites.
We also created personas for the various types of university website users, such as faculty, current students, prospective students, and parents (which you can check out here).
Sketching allowed us to iterate wireframes rapidly and work through the logic of our architecture as a team.
Music Management
For our final project, we created a prototype music streaming mobile app, focusing on the construction and management of playlists. Using Nielson's usability heuristics as a metric, we performed an in depth usability evaluation of current apps; we then conducted interviews, asking users to first walk us through their music apps verbally, then show us how to create a playlist in their app of choice.
We recorded walkthroughs using Lookback (an app that allows you to record user's screen); we tried to hit a range of apps, including: Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, 8tracks, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, Google Play, and iTunes. We then transcribed the steps into a competitive analyis. You can view our 25+ sheets of interviews and analyses here. We then built our prototype app in InVision, a design prototyping platform. You can visit the live app by clicking on the gif below or you can check out our difficult decisions paper here.
