quartz/content/notes/full-assignment.md

Brain Storming

Concept 1 - Snowboard trick generator.

This will be a mobile app that snowboarders can use to automatically generate random tricks. This app will be useful because snowboarders (riders) often get tunnel vision on a certain style of tricks or even a single trick. Using a algorithm to generate tricks provides a way for them to escape this focus. It can also be used when playing a game of SNOW, which is similar to a game of SKATE.

Initial Ideas

• customisable trick generator
  • trick lists --> users can create lists for the generator to choose a trick from
    • some built in lists
    • share lists with friends
  • options
    • trick types
      • jump
      • rail
      • pipe
      • butters
    • flips
    • spins
    • grabs
    • spin direction
    • bring back or not
    • stance
      • regular
      • goofy
• daily trick
  • same for all users?
  • auto notification
  • schedule
    • weekly
    • custom
    • auto when at an altitude
• App widget with daily trick?
• search for tricks
  • options similar to generator
  • save tricks to a list for generator
• link with other users
  • methods
    • qr code
    • url/link
    • contact
    • social media
  • people
    • friends
    • coach
    • parents
  • features
    • daily/sheduled trick group
      • how would this work with altitude detector
    • share trick lists
    • community section for trick lists
      • like spotify playlists
    • users can share tutorials
• Ease of use - (hard to use with gloves)
  • voice controls
  • gesture controls
• goals tracking
  • goal lists
  • daily/weekly/yearly goals
  • trick generator can choose a trick from goals
  • share (or keep private) with coach and friends
  • trick tutorials

Final Choices

Core features:

• customisable generator
  • all options no trick lists
• daily trick
  • Notification
  • able to set a schedule or have it go when at an altitude
• links with friends
  • Do same tricks
  • link with QR code or url

The first core feature of the app is the customisable trick generator. It should be very easy and quick to use. This presents an interesting problem as while snowboarding, users are wearing large mittens, and the air can be very cold for hands. It would be ideal if it could be used while wearing mittens.

The second core feature of the app is the Daily Trick. This means that users get a notification with a random trick from the trick generator. This feature could allows users to get the benefit of the trick generator without having to open the app on the mountain. However, the issue here is that most people don't snowboard everyday. To get around this, I could allow the users to schedule days on which to recieve a daily trick, or I could alert them whenever they are on a mountain by monitoring their altitude. Of course the second option has some privacy issues that will need to be considered.

The third core feature of the app is the link with friends. This is a core feature because snowboarders will typically rider with a group of friends. Being able to join a 'trick group' means these groups can do the same trick and 'compete' against each other.

Existing Apps

Similar Apps I found:

• For skateboarding:
  • getatrick.com
  • skate gen mobile app
  • Skate Tricks
  • Skateboard tricks
  • Skate Dice
• Freestyle Generator for inline skating, tramp and skiing
• Scooter trick generator

I was able to find only 7 apps with similar functionality to what I am planning. Of these none 5 were for skateboarding 2 for other sports and zero for snowboarding.

These 7 apps all had varying degreee of complexity. Some were just simple customizable trick generators, while others were fully fledged coaching and goal tracking apps with community features and other extras. Although I am not planning to make large complicated app, I can still draw from them for guidance as most of them did have a trick generator.

Skate Dice

Skate dice was one of the most intresting the apps I found. It had a very unique approach using a "shake the phone" gesture to "roll" the dice. However it has a paywall for premium features such as more tricks, settings, and a "tricktionary". From what I was able to use I think is was the most simple and intuitive apps. It also had an aesthetic that fit the culture of the sport. All these features combined made it very enjoyable to use.

Takeaways:

• Keep design simple
• Maybe incorporate some gestures
• Consider using an aesthetic wich matches the culture/sport

Skate tricks

This app is a much more fully featured solution. It is oriented towards learning skateboarding, and keeping track of you progress while doing it. It also has a built in trick generator, and game of skate. One of the most unique features it had that the other apps didn't was a trick of the day. This is one of the core features I want to include in my app. Another interesting feature it had was a page informing the user about injury prevention.

Personas and Scenarios

Inital Ideas

• kyle the casual (primary maybe secondary)

  • age 23
  • skill advanced
  • focus: tricks

• aaron the coach (seconday maybe primary)

  • age 30
  • skill used to be pro, now advanced
  • focus teaching tricks

• logan the learner (seconday persona)

  • age 16
  • skill intermediate
  • focus not sure yet, beginning to experiement with tricks

• mac the professional (seconday persona)

  • age 20
  • skill pro
  • focus tricks, uses the app occaionaly with friends

• karen the parent (negative persona)

  • age 45
  • skill intermediate
  • focus, groomed runs, some backcountry

• phil the powder hound (supplementary persona)

  • age 40
  • skill advanced (not with tricks just in general)
  • focus off piste/backcountry, sometimes goes into park with friends/kids

  Primary: Casual Kyle

• Age: 23
• Gender: Male
• Skill Level: Advanced (Not proffessional)
• Focus: Terrian Park

Goals

Experience goals

• wants a quick easy, no hassle, minimal effort experience.
• does not want to appear to be a "nerd" or "try hard"

End goals

• wants to find new interesting tricks that he may not have thought of himself
• wants to progress his level of snowboarding
• wants to show off new cool tricks to his friends

Life goals

• wants to be a "cool snowboarder"
• wants to have as much fun as possible

Behaviour

Activities

• He is a snowboader. He rides at a least a few days every week
• has a day job, barely enough money for season pass, rides up the mountain, and equipment
• mostly rides in the terrain park

Attitudes

• Likes using social apps

Aptidudes/skills

• has advanced knowledge of the snowboarding tricks, grabs, and variations
• considers himself an advanced snowboarder
• rides all the advanced features in the park.
• can do at least a 540
• can do a good frontboard, maybe some 270s
• has fun in the pipe but not his favourite thing

Motivations

• wants to find new interesting tricks that he may not have thought of himself, to improve his skills by expanding his "set" of tricks.

Scenario

Kyle wakes up in the morning at 6:45 to go snowboarding with his friends. He sees he has a notification from the trick generator app. The trick for today is a switch back lip. Kyle is excited to try the trick. Kyles friends have also seen the daily trick on their phones. When they meet up on the mountain they all learn the trick and have fun. After they have all done a switch back lip. They decide they want to try another trick. Kyle his phone out of his pocket, opens the app, which loads almost instantly, and generates a trick with only one tap.

Secondary: Logan the learner

• Age:13
• Skill: intermediate
• Focus not sure yet, beginning to experiement with tricks

Goals

Experience goals

• wants a quick easy, no hassle, minimal effort experience.
• feels excited when using the app
• also feels a little nervous about trying something new

End goals

• wants to find new tricks that he can learn with his friends, since he doesn't know many
• wants to stay motivated to learn a new trick each day/week

Life goals

• Wants to have fun on the weekend
• Wants to get excersise

Behaviour

Activities

• Snowboarder
• lives in a town near a skifield where it is common to snowboard.
• rides a few times a fortnight, with friends and/or family. maybe in a school program (like they have in wanaka schools)

Attitudes

• Likes using technology

Aptidudes/skills

• has been riding mostly on the groomed runs, is now getting good enough to try the terrian park.
• has been doing some 180s maybe on sidehits.

Motivations

• wants to find new tricks that he can learn with his friends, since he doesn't know many

Scenario

Logan is snowboarding on the mountain with a group of his friends. Logan and his friends decide to go into the terrian park and try some tricks. None of his friends know what tricks to try. Logan takes his phone out of his pocket and without removing his gloves, unlocks it with face ID, and looks at the widget which is showing random trick. Logan then puts his phone back in his pocket, tells his friends the trick, and all him and his friends have fun racing to do the trick first.

Low-Fi Prototypes

Inital Designs

Navigation

The first thing I wanted to was get a clear picture of how each screen should interact with the others. Identified three main screens: Home, Friends, and Schedule. I also identified some supplementary screens: Trick options, other settings, and welcome, and some more optional screens: Trick lists, trick dictionary.

I also listed some things that each screen should contain

General protoypes

Next I started to get down down general ideas about all of the screens. The main goal of this step for was to figure out the general flow of the app, and to get a general idea of how each screen should look.

This first two pages I was experimenting mostly with the home screen. I tried three different layouts: Top tabs, Bottom tabs, and floating bottom buttons. I also started to explore ways for the user to navigate from the home screen to the trick options screen, and the schedule screen.

The second page I explored a some variations on the floating button design. And begin experimenting with the navigation and layout of the friends screen.

On the third page I kept experimenting with the friends page.

In depth prototypes

Home screen

I wanted to keep the layout mostly based on googles material design. This will help with four design heuristics: Familiar metaphors and language, consistency and standards, recognition over recall, and minimalist design.

I started with creating an partly new design that combined the floating buttons, and the swipe feature for trick options. I decided against this as within material design it is not reccomended to have multiple floating buttons. I decided instead to use bottom tabs as they are the most logical, and familiar design for users.

I also decided against the swipe feature to show tricks, and opted instead for a button which opened another screen.

I also tried out some other designs features a black background and round buttons.

Other settings

Trick Options

For the trick Options I considered a few three main designs: the swipe/scroll, the modal, and the full screen.

Welcome

Schedule

Refinement

Firstly I converted the lo-fi prototypes into Adobe XD designs.

I decided I wanted to make some chagnes to the design here so I saved this as version 1.

Schedule changes

I wanted to chagne the way the schedule/altude options worked. My first rough redesign was this:

I thought I could remove the separation and combine the two screens. But this didn't work so well. However, I think the ability to switch between meters and feet was good as this improves user control and freedom. Also the use of the spinner for time and altitude selection will be familiar to most users. This improves use of consistency and standards, and recognitiona over recall

I then decided to try a "switch" type design, where the user is forced to chooose between the schedule and the altitude.

I think think this works much better as it shows the system status clearly. And has a less cluttered more miniml, aesthetic design. I kept the weekday selection on both screens as the might only want use the altitude system on certain days. This improves, user control and freedom.

I also thought it might not be super what the funcitons of the two options were, especially the altitude option. So decided to add a closable info card with some information. This improves help and documentation

I thought the info symbol might have looked like a button so I changed it:

I also changed the alignment of the weekday selection buttons. And the altitude selector

Trick options Changes

I decied to change the way this worked. Instead of have the save cancel buttons I wanted the settings change to have immediate effect, so the user didn't have to save. This was the first redesign:

This is largely the same, except I added a head with back button and remove the bottom save and cancel buttons. Next I changed the dropdown for each of the trick types to individual screens with the commonly used right chevron icon.

"Color" scheme changes

After I had mostly finished the Layout. I changed the look to match the snowboarding "aesthetic", by making the app primarily black

More layout changes

I decided to add the home row navigation back to the trick options screens to improve user control and freedom

Hi-Fi Prototypes