The home page of my team's project for B IMD 250
For decades, humanity has dreamt of someday setting foot on another planet.
Unfortunately, we aren't there quite yet, but it's never too soon to start asking questions. For example, how will we keep talking with people on Earth when we make it to Mars?
I was asked this question in an interactive design class. Quite the ask for an undergraduate student, to say the least. Thankfully, we weren't designing something for actual people to use going to the Red Planet, but the idea was to imagine what future Mars colonists would need to keep in contact with Earth and survive. Together, my teammates and I set out to create an idea for a program that Mars inhabitants could use to not only send messages and data to Earth, but keep track of inventory and supply usage.
Project Summary
The prompt we were given was to design an application that would allow Mars colonists to communicate with people on Earth. After numerous brainstorming sessions, we decided that we would create a system to track supply levels and communicate that data as efficiently as we could.
Click here to view our high-fidelity prototype in Adobe XD!
An early home page design prototype
Our primary proto-persona
Design Process
With such a broad prompt, our team had some difficulty deciding what the best solution was to the problem. We finally decided to create an inventory application after considering many other possible functions and systems. With a project direction set, we created proto-personas to understand who would be using our designs. Style guides, wire frames, and other ideation documents were made, and soon afterwards, our first prototype was created. We then took our prototype to a user testing phase, which turned out to be incredibly informative. After multiple rounds of user testing and reflection, our prototype was tweaked and polished to create a high-fidelity sample program.
Final Product
Our final prototype is far from a completed design project, but it is a huge step towards one! Numerous rounds of user testing and collaboration led us to downscale and refine many aspects of our design, while also discovering new features that improved our program's efficiency. The latest iteration of our prototype features a log-in page, revamped messaging systems, data input screens, and various other graphic and functional additions.
Personal Reflection
This project taught me about plenty of design practices and concepts. I enjoyed putting my abilities to the test while expanding and improving them. In working with my team, I was amazed at how different our ideas were to solve the problems we faced. Everyone in the group had their own, unique way to solve design problems, which led to a very diverse set of solutions to draw from. The result was a design that none of us had expected and everyone was proud of!
If I were to continue working on this project, I would first run another set of user tests to see how successful our latest iteration of design changes works. After creating an interface design that my team and I feel works best for users, we would begin programming the application to complete its intended tasks to their full extent.
I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project, and am eager to do similar work in the future! I am eager to take more opportunities to do visual design and help create working projects for people to use.
