After receiving the brief for our UX/UI project I looked into generating a few possible ideas and mind-mapped a few. I thought the best ideas to come up with would be based around apps I would use and would find interesting
I started off by listing some things I’m interested in and thinking about how I could create an app off those ideas. After thinking about the individual ideas I narrowed it down to 2 of my favourite ideas which I didn’t think already existed.
The first idea was based around surfing. As a surfer myself I have surfing apps which are based around informing the user of the size of the waves, temperature, wind etc. The problem with a lot of these apps from a beginners view point is that it can be too confusing and not be as clear as it could be, using things like swell, wind, tides etc instead of just the wave size. The idea of my app would be to design a ‘kooks’ guide to surfing which makes it as simple as possible to judge the size of the waves. It would tell the user what size the waves would be, what board style to use, what thickness of wetsuit etc to make it as straight forward as possible.
My second idea was to create a money saving app, especially aimed at students. A problem I tend to have a lot of the time, as a student, is that spending small amounts of money here and there eventually add up to large amounts of money. The idea behind the app is for the user to have to physically tap or swipe each penny into their wallet to make them aware of the money they are spending. Not only to make the user aware of the money they spend, but also to help them save money at the same time.
Group tutorial
After speaking with Theo in our group tutorial, we decided the money saving app was the better and more original idea. Although the idea is very simple we agreed the idea behind it is strong and can be kept simple but be very effective. We agreed it should be relatively simple to layout and design as it will only need a small amount of frames to interact with, however we discussed that I would need to make sure each of these parts was clear and effective. For example, swiping or tapping each coin into the ‘wallet’ will will the main feature of the app, it will only be one page so needs to be simple but easy to use.
We also discussed the idea of each coin being only 1p. We spoke and realised that even something like a can of drink or chocolate bar, for example, would take too long to be able to afford, so we decided 10p each time would be much more achievable.
Ben Jackson 