Telepath asked our General Assembly Team to help them design a desktop application that would help programmers and developers solve daily problems faster. Telepath pairs with existing IDEs and connects programmers and developers to relevant resources and teammates. We worked directly with our client to provide User Experience services from research to high-fidelity wireframes. Our work helped validate the usefulness of Telepath to their target users, a group we helped define.
COMPANY: General Assemby (Client Project)
CLIENT: Telepath
DURATION: 1 Month
MY ROLE: User Research, UX, Visual Design
Process
RESEARCH:
User Research | Competitive Analysis | Persona | Client Meeting 1
ITERATION FOR DISCOVERY:
Paper Prototyping | User Testing 1| Wireframes | Client Meeting 2
ITERATION FOR DELIVERY:
User Testing 2 | Mid-Fidelity Prototype | User Testing 3
DELIVERY + EVALUATION:
High Fidelity Clickable Prototype | Client Presentation
User Research
From our research, we were able to help Telepath identity their target audience for releasing the MVP, and it helped us build our persona, Liam. We identified key resources that should be integrated into Telepath. We also discovered Telepath would have the greatest impact for new employees at a medium-sized start-up.
Persona Development
Through ten interviews, we were able to build our primary persona, Liam and secondary persona, Liam's manager, Sam. We realized Telepath would be most impactful in helping new employees and tested our design's through the lens of Liam's third day at his new job.
The Problem
As a new employee, Liam is having a hard time finding relevant and accurate resources when he gets stuck. He doesn’t know who to go to or where to start.
The Solution
Telepath is a desktop app. that preemptively provides information to programmers which eliminates the stress and frustration of searching through multiple irrelevant resources.
Adaptable View
ANY SCREEN, ANYWHERE
Liam not only works with multiple monitors on his desktop, but he likes to work on his trip home on Caltrain on in coffee shops. He needs Telepath to be resizable to accommodate for scenarios where screen real-estate is limited.
A Non-disruptive Solution
With Telepath, Liam can go about his tasks as he normally would. His workflow is not interrupted and his workspace is customizable to fit his needs. We learned from testing as well as reviews of products such as Microsoft's "Clippy" that Telepath needed to constantly provided new information without banners or alerts that were deemed "distracting" by users.
Privacy
IS TELEPATH WATCHING MY EVERY MOVE?
We discovered in testing that users were very concerned about what Telepath would "watch" while they were browsing on their computer. While Telepath will not track social media such as Facebook or Twitter, it will track emails. In order to provide Liam a sense of security when he is sharing information that is not work-related, Liam can enter "incognito mode."
Discovery and Iteration
Adding Value
Testing Telepath's Value Proposition
Our client came to us with a product he believed could add value by improving the efficiency of a programmer’s day-to-day workflow. Through ten interviews with programmers, developers, software engineers and their managers, we were able to help refine this value proposition and identify key problem areas that Telepath could help resolve. We created an affinity map to observe trends in problems across interviews.
Putting Telepath to the Test
Through testing, we were able to validate, add and eliminate features as well as assess the functionality of the design. We used the MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could Have) Method to prioritize design elements based on user feedback. This allowed us to eliminate unnecessary features such ranking a user's contribution to Telepath's database (users felt this would not help them and would make them anxious about being judged).
Getting Started
One of the most challenging insights to incorporate into our designs stemmed from just getting started. Many users felt like the hardest challenge in starting their day was their ability to quickly pick up where they left off" the day before. We created the Telepath Welcome Page to help users reopen recent applications and to see trending articles or resources their team members are using. After testing, we also included search functionality to allow users to immediately search for a resource.
What's in a name?
When testing, we found many wanted to quickly assess how helpful a resource would be to them without opening it. The name of a resource alone was not enough. Our solution was to include snippets of the code that were copied from the webpage as well as a hover state that would show a snapshot of the webpage, document or other resource.