The aim of this project is to provide opportunities to engage in an individual design challenge at a level of lo-fidelity prototyping – these include wire-framing of information architecture and information design and the use of physical paper-based mock ups to test design ideas.
Part 1 : Research & PACT ANALYSIS
According to the user group options in the brief, I decide to choose the first one(Key stage (KS2) school children (7-11) – tablet users). Suppose this is a weather app designed for Shanghai ‘s KS2 students, which will cooperate with the school, timely update the weather conditions, and give students relevant suggestions in terms of time, travel route, dress and so on.
Firstly, i will doing some research on People, Activities, Contexts and Technologies(PACT).
· People
My target users are Key stage school children (7-11) .In order to design an app for them, I need to understand their commute. The safety of students’ travel is the most concerned aspect by school besides teaching. For students who do not take the school bus, there are several ways to get around. Here are some data from different reports that show KS2 students‘ s specific situation on commuting. My weather app will be all based on these information.
01. Children’s characteristic in learning and colour preference
This is an excerpt from the journal, and it says that research shows that Non-interactive learning is enhanced by the interactivity provided by the touchscreen interface, which means compared with sight, touch are more likely to stimulate children’s interest in learning,It can be seen that children are more interested in touching than reading, and I will apply this feature to my app design.
This is a table from a journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, As shown in the chart, the colour’s influence scale rank is from top to bottom, and the positive attraction scale is also rank ed from strong to weak. In all age groups, and for all topics, black tended to be the most frequently chosen colour for completing the drawings of the negatively characterised topics. Therefore, I need to pay attention to the use of color schemes that can bring positive attraction to children.
On the basis of colour analysis, I continue to explore what kind of images are more likely to attract them. If they only want to sleep when they see this app or only look at it under the pressure of parents, that would be meaningless. I need to know how to catch the child’s eye, so I decide to take inspiration from what they look and read daily, Children’s literature.
This video shows the characteristics of children’s literature, illustrious illustrations for eye catching, poetic prose(Great words in great order), happy humour for fun, charismatic charactors(people who are easy to like or hate), parental appeal(adult should like it too), I believe these elements are very significant.
02. Children’s commutes
Weather cannot be exist alone, it should be connected with children’s daily life. This app is design with school, so students‘ commutes(go to school and back) should also be considered in my app. These two tables below show the two peak periods of students’ travel, going to school (7:00-8:00) and going back home (15:30-16:50).It seems that in the design of the APP, I need to focus on the performance of these two periods.
Keyword : Key stage school children (7-11)、Peak period、weather 、touchscreen、colour
· Activities & Contents
01. Weather
As a weather app, the main function is to be able to broadcast the weather situation firstly.
Based on my mind map, i start to think about specific functions. Since the APP is used in cities most of the time, all these activities can be updated in real time through the network. This video show 6 weather app for Android, they bring lots of inspiration, it helps me figure out main functions of Weather APP.:
Region, date, wind, weather, humidity, temperature, weekly forecast, air quality, sunrise and sunset time, map(Topographic/ Normal), amplification function, background GIF that mimics the real climate or scenario.
However, these apps all emphasize simplicity and small text and sense of technology, which are not an ideal way to for children‘s reading.
02. dress suggestions
The app’s target users are children(7-12), which mean this app needs to educate and guide children. This section will give your child some advice on how to dress and individual protection in different weather conditions to help keep their health.
03. Traffic routes
At present, most schools in Shanghai have not been equipped with underground parking lots, and some schools with parking lots have not been opened for parents. According to the secondary research, (the questionnaire analysis of students’ private car transport in 6 schools in SH ) shows that: In terms of transportation, most parents of private cars will pick up and drop off their children, so they need to know about the traffic conditions and navigation (specific route choices、parking suggestion.)
The figure below shows the General learning time consumption and mode statistics. According to the survey, walking is the main way to get to school within 10 minutes, while private car is less than half of the way. The number of private cars passing to school 10 minutes away gradually increases, taking up an increasing proportion. The utilization rate of bus is very low, and some parents say that the bus transfer is not convenient and safe enough for KS2 students, and the bus cannot arrive at school on time in the morning peak hours and Large crowds can lead to safety hazards such as stampedes. So parents usually do not give priority to the choice.
Therefore, I believe a navigation is necessary in this app, school and the surrounding parking area will be set as either a starting point or an ending point in my app. There will have three navigation options: path navigation (for students who walk to school), public transport navigation (for students who take buses and underground to school), and car navigation (for students who take private cars to school). In addition, to ensure the safety of students, a real-time positioning system will be set up.
04. connection with school and family
In my research, I found that most families do not trust their children to go to school alone, and they will choose a family member to accompany their children to school, The following two tables show the distribution of the percentage of children picked up by different families in different types of communities and the different reasons for picking up and dropping off children. Therefore, I believe it is necessary to establish the function of the connection between students and the school and the connection between students and family.
Therefore, I believe contact is also necessary, In this program, I will add the chat room function. In the chat room, there will be a school teacher, students and parents to keep children safe on their way to and from school and at other times, and pay attention to their growth. At the same time, a forum will be designed to update news about Weather and Travel.
· Technology
After identity who you want to target, what functions it should contain and why, I move on to consider how will my weather app be used.
This video is very realistic and shows a day in the life of a Chinese student. I tried to find the moment when each child had access to electronic devices. Students In Shanghai are not allowed to use mobile phones when they enter school, but many parents still leave them with their children and turn it off, so they can contacted their parents after school easily. Therefore, I need to consider when they are able to contact Electronic Equipment, and how can they know today’s weather, road conditions and contacts in a limited time.
· When they have breakfast in the morning. —— Tablet
· When they on their way to school / back home —— Phone / Iwatch
· When they contact technology —— Computer / Tablet
· When they use iwatch —— Iwatch
In my research, I can clearly understand the possible correlation between weather and KS2 students, considering the types of electronic products students can contact, the time they are able to spend on and possible time they spend on the APP. Users are able to play programs by touching buttons and graphics on the interface. Every button and graphic will be designed based on the visual appeal of the students, which will easy for them to understand and use, and make their use-experience more interesting.
According to the requirements of Brief, my APP will be used on the tablet. Compared with the mobile phone, the demonstration of the tablet is slightly different, so I start to look for some tablet-demonstrated app. These images below are designed from an experimental-period weather app, which shows weather broadcasting in landscape mode.
Here is a video shows 10 different tablet-demonstrated app,
https://youtu.be/FnXSTSbBpco (video of a n experimental-period tablet-demonstrated weather app)
In this video, the designer took advantage of the large screen space to zoom in on some of the content, Background Map (Climate Simulation), Daily Weather (Horizontal Slide), Region Selection (Earth Simulation), Map (Climate).
Weather: GPS/ Map/ Weather forecasting function/ Weather radar chart/ Weather news tracking/Clock function
Dress: Temperature prediction(Outside temperature and somatosensory temperature)/shopping
Traffic Route: GPS/ Map/ voice function/ scanning/ photograph/ voice function
Connection: GPS/ Communication(chat) function/ photograph/ voice function/Clock function
Part 2 : Creating Persona
Part 3 : Creating Roughly-Rough wireframe
Based on my PACT Analysis and persona, I start to think about How to establish my idea.
In the following process, I need to pay attention to some details. First of all, this is an app for children, which means the interface must be different from that for adults. The main tone must be positive, optimistic, interesting and playful in terms of font, layout, colour, images matching. Secondly, this is a weather APP, so the weather will be the main function of this APP, which will also run through the whole APP. Clothing suggestions, travel routes and contacts serve as auxiliary functions, and educational idea will be added to the operation. which will able to guide children to get what should they do in different weather. In addition, the APP will establish a connection between school, students and parents to ensure the safety of students. The APP will be used in primary schools in the city, so network support is needed. The offline mode can only see the weather conditions of the day and a week.
The framework below is my initial idea:
Roughly-rough Idea Stage 1:
Now I am going to start from preparing tools. I collected some paper from my sketch to simulate the interface and frame based on 2020 Apple iPad Pro 12.9″.
Then, I am going to start to draw my pages.
Video below shows every steps and functions of my app, they will help me to Demonstrate how the interface works and displays. I upload the links of every step of my app in this blog.
1.These video below is to represent ‘LIVE‘. Children are able to share their own life(weather) and find out other places’ weather, just like a social function. The weather information is showed through this whole function.
2. This video below is to represent ‘WEATHER DETAILS’. It is similar with normal weather app, but it is more vividly, it concludes 24 hours temperature forecast, 15 days weather forecast, today’s rainfall. At the same time, footprints collecting game is also be included in this page, and there are two footprints-tree which can produces more footprints than any other page.
3.This video below is about dressing. This is a very educational function, which tells the children what kind of clothes they need to wear in what kind of weather. At the same time, the exchange function of the reward mechanism is also here. It is like a shopping experience, and the products will be exchanged by browsing the footprints collected.
This is a function of membership, which contains two modes, free mode and school mode(in semester). Children can arbitrary switching them, when it turns to free mode, everything around school would be closed. They will complete their personal information in this page, and get their membership privilege.
This is a function of suggested travel routes, which contains three different traffic way: car, public bus and walking. If child want to go out by car, the function will also provide a service of parking guide, which is necessary for children and their parents. If it’s public bus or walking, they will receice the most fast route in this app.
