Jog

Since our intention was to learn about the entire user journey, we determined that conducting a workshop would be more effective than other methods. Workshops enable participants to share a broader range of information by creating artifacts. Hence, we facilitated a virtual 1-hour workshop with 6 stakeholders.

Participant Composition

• 2 project sponsors from the Jog team
• 2 existing Jog users
• 2 non-users who are Jog's target audience

We concluded 4 key takeaways.

1. The proposed design should be feasible for implementation and accessible for many Jog users.
2. People typically feel bad or embarrassed when they cannot remember someone's name.
3. Jog users often meet a lot of new people at various occasions, and the Jog app does function as a reminder, but the pain point of how to develop a deeper relationship remains unsolved.
4. After meeting new connections, people tend to reflect on their interactions in private settings.

Our main objective with wireframing was to quickly prototype solutions and assess their viability. We selected ideas that are aligned with our core statement and showed promise in addressing user problems. Two primary features were chosen:

1. Grouping allows users to categorize their connections based on attributes.
2. For each connection, users can further add details such as emails, calendar events, photos, shared memories, etc. We hope to provide users a centralized place to track and manage information.

With the feedback and additional user insights, we returned to the drawing board. We decided to make the following improvements to the next iteration.

• Add a flashcard feature to help users remember key information about their connection.
• Assist users with adding reflections of their experiences to Jog.
• Allow and encourage users to set follow-up reminder with their connections.
• Provide users the option of using avatars instead of uploading a photo.

We could have evaluated our final design.

For this project, time constraints prevented us from conducting another round of testing. In retrospect, I hope we had allocated time to evaluate our design and project outcomes. If I could go back in time, I might not creating such a refined prototype. Instead, I would spend that time for a subsequent round of user testing. I could imagine facing some pushbacks from project sponsors, but I believe the team would be able to convince stakeholders that design validation is more significant than aesthetically pleasing mockups. 

My personal projection is that our final design still might not meet our project objectives. I believe the incorporation of Generate AI could elevate this product by a great margin, but unfortunately, such integration was beyond the project scope.

Let people learn from their mistakes is a good mentorship strategy.

During this project, I had numerous opportunities to mentor freshmen of the UX major. I generally allow mentees to navigate their chosen paths, even if I foresee potential pitfalls. I believe learning from one's own mistakes fosters deeper understanding. After facing challenges as a team, I would lead reflection sessions to discuss what went wrong and how we should proceed. This was what happened for user research. Initially, we attempted interviews but found them less informative. It was only later we realized workshop would be more effective. Even though this mentorship approach might seem time-consuming, I believe it's long-term benefits in learning and growth outweigh the immediate inefficiencies.