A little Team Work Goes A Loooooooong Way
I started the day reviewing the different mock-ups I have drawn and reading the different notes that I have written throughout the design process. By the end of yesterday, I saw that is was time to have someone critique my progress, as I was having few ideas on how to improve what I had already created. I compiled a list of questions that I have encountered throughout the design process so I could better understand the goals of the app and met with Dr. Atreja.
There are times when it is simpler to work alone, but when quality is a goal, there is no replacement for collaboration. Like a writing sample that is re-modeled after the inspection of an editors "new set of eyes," design can have non-linear improvement when another perspective is added to the mix. That is exactly what happened in today's meeting.
There were parts of the design that I felt I had settled on. I knew I wanted more from the design, but I could not on my own figure out a way to accomplish these tasks. The most pressing example was my debate on the home screen. I have already blogged twice about the debate I have deemed "Terminal Vs. Report Card" in which I want the home screen to both present information and provide easy access to information input functions of the app. Talking this out with Dr. Atreja put me back on the right track. We now have a plan to give the home screen both these functions, a plan that I am really excited about, and have now been working on. Whatever I make today will be ousted by something better tomorrow, but that is the way design works. Always look forward, never settle, don't be attached and embrace the new. I know each step has value and I am sure a piece of everyday's work will somehow be present in the final product.
There were parts of the design that I felt I had settled on. I knew I wanted more from the design, but I could not on my own figure out a way to accomplish these tasks. The most pressing example was my debate on the home screen. I have already blogged twice about the debate I have deemed "Terminal Vs. Report Card" in which I want the home screen to both present information and provide easy access to information input functions of the app. Talking this out with Dr. Atreja put me back on the right track. We now have a plan to give the home screen both these functions, a plan that I am really excited about, and have now been working on. Whatever I make today will be ousted by something better tomorrow, but that is the way design works. Always look forward, never settle, don't be attached and embrace the new. I know each step has value and I am sure a piece of everyday's work will somehow be present in the final product.
So for the rest of the day I worked on the new version of our app. Though we really only discussed the home screen in our meeting: changing the first screen will change every subsequent screen... I have also done research on the Short Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (SIBDQ), as I was just today introduced to the role this qualitative measure of QOL will hold in IBDPromise (Crohn'sPROMISE, whichever/whatever though if we change the name then there is the question of which letters to capitalize now?!?). For the SIBDQ I am going to make a mock up of both a scroll list of answers as well as a sliding scale. Reading about the use of the SIBDQ, it seems you tally a QOL by just adding up the response to each of the ten questions to get a score from 10-70. Maybe this needs its own clinical trial to justify (no, I will not request for an additional clinical trial to be run just for this...) but would a sliding scale for each question ranging from 1-7 not accomplish the same task?
Anyways, my goal is to be done with the design improvements by tomorrow so I can start rendering some of these ideas on the computer. I think once these designs are on a screen rather than my nursery level sketches, it will be easier to see where improvements can be made and which design concepts are most promising.
Jeremy-OUT!
Jeremy-OUT!
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