about
Lost & Found
For my final project as part of the Thinkful UX design course, I had to come up with a design within the subject ‘Lost & found items in the city’.
To narrow the subject a bit down, I chose to focus on a lost & found at events (e.g conferences, festivals etc) and my idea was to create a mobile application that could be used as a “marketplace” for lost & found items at certain events.
The app should simplify the problem of lost & found at a certain event, by enabling people who lost something and people who found something to directly connect with each other via the app, which would have been almost impossible without the app.
the process
I followed all necessary UX design steps to ensure a well-thought of design that fulfills all user needs.
User Research is fundamental, as you need data to back up your assumptions, as well as discovering any other potential frustration the user might experience within the problem area. The results of my survey backed up my assumptions that people perceive events as a location where they are most likely to lose personal belongings.
User Personas & Scenarios are essential when defining your target market and identifying possible scenarios where they might use your potential design. I created three personas and six scenarios for the lost & found project.
mindmaps
Mindmapping ensures that the problem is clear. First, I visualized the problem without the possible app, and then with a potential app:
Sketching
Sketching kick starts the creative process and makes you think about different ways to visualize the user interface. Some of the sketches are shown in the image below:
Usability Testing
Usability Testing is essential to test how users will use your app and with those results you can fine-tune your initial prototype before passing it to developing. After running a usability test with a potential user, a few limitations were found with the initial design
- Would be good to have a ‘My events’ tab, to see all the events you’re going to
- Add option to scan/read ticket QR code of barcode, to directly import the ticket number
- Homepage and sidebar menu show the same options. For an app, a sidebar menu should be enough and there is no need to show a “homepage”. Otherwise this would lead to confusion
- Add option to set phone number at the beginning & in my profile
- Option to find a ‘Broader Match’ if there is no match initially
- In the splash screen it should say “Register with …” and not “login with…”
- Possibility to import Eventbrite tickets into the app, so that all tickets bought via Eventbrite are already shown
Wireframe video
Wireframing ensures that your design is cleaner and more detailed, and you can start adding different features. For this project I used Mockplus to build the design and workflow of the Lost & Found app.
