Simon is an organizational platform
Simon
Most freelancers will often rely on five different apps just to stay organized and to properly time manage their projects. At times it can often feel impossible to satisfy every client when you don't have a personal assistant. Our main challenge we will face is incorporating many functions within one app with a tight deadline.
Role
Researching
Wireframing
Branding
Prototyping
Timeframe
5 Weeks
Tools
Illustrator
Sketch
Invision
Overview
Placed 4th at the 2021 Reply Challenge out of 2000 applicants. With only a team of two and 48 hours to complete, EasyJet challenged us to re-design their user web and app experience and inspire travellers to explore new destinations and jump on the latest opportunities.
As a team of Canadian travel enthusiasts, we first encountered easyJet on our Erasmus semester in university. We remembered being in a new continent for the first time, not knowing where to go but wanting to see everything. When booking trips, we would toggle between travel guides, trip itineraries, Google Maps and our calendars. So when EasyJet challenged designers to re-imagine the travel search experience, we jumped at the opportunity.
Team
Samantha Hansel
Monique Lopes
Me
To solve the problem of referring to various apps, we integrated an AI. By formulating a benchmark analysis we decided to team up with Toggle, a time management app, to save time and to use an app that many people are familiar with.
Research & Analysis
As a current student and freelancer, I understood the frustrations most freelance designers face when it comes to time management and tackling all the other small problems that causes stress. Although, I wanted to know the opinions of freelance designers and students of all different sexualities when having a male AI to assist you as well as having many functions within an app. Therefore, our team formulated a PACT analysis to help better visualize the scenario and then used the DECIDE framework to create our user test plan.
The first attempt we began testing our first AI initially named Jack. We did this by reading a script to our user testers although we felt that the feedback wasn't that accurate since it was female voices reading the script.
Our solution to our first attempt was showing a video of the screens displaying a conversation between the user and the AI and having the user write a letter to Jack. To view additional feedback click here.
Results & Feedback on the first AI
Some of the feedback we received from users was that the graphics of sound levels at the bottom becomes useless because there is no animation indicating if Simon is speaking. The voice pitch of Simon could be higher to make him seem more friendly. The name needs to be changed from "Jack" to "Simon" because "Jack" reminds users of the gay dating app "Jacked". The background should have contrast and include text bubbles around each message to simulate a real conversation between the user and the AI.
Final Main Pages
LANDING PAGE
PROJECTS PAGE
TASK PAGE
CALENDAR PAGE
Reflection
Focus less on the small details.
As someone who tends to be a perfectionist and go over the top, I was happy to discover that having an unpolished prototype worked in our favour. Going back to make changes based on user feedback is exciting instead of frustrating because the app needed to be refined anyways.
We kept the interview environment relaxed and this worked very well because I think participants felt comfortable voicing their true opinions. I will definitely take this into future user tests I do.
One thing I would change would be not bothering to record the screen that the user was doing the test on. I thought it would be helpful to go back to, but just watching the users’ actions and hearing their feedback was more useful than watching the recordings. In fact, we didn’t watch the recording because the verbal feedback from users was so clear, the recordings were not necessary.
Branding Guidelines
