Phase 3 - Design and Looks

At this point of time... this may help:



The issue of first impression

It is said that first impression is formed in the first 50 milliseocond of laying your eyes on something. Hence, it seems relevant to place the first page of the three low-fidelity prototype to see its progression from totally not aesthetic to a (hopefully) more satisfying design:












Design 1 - Forgeting about design

The first design - or rather the lack of it - is due to our obsession with adding in the functionality to a project management website. As a result, the website has too many hierarchies, and even from the initial look of it, we know that it's not intuitive and pleasing.

However, we are just too concerned about the depth that we forgot about the main objective of having a pleasing design.

User testing and opinions from Mr. Reddy are being taken into account. It quickly makes us realize how far off we have become. In fact, we were wondering how come we were so far off when the latter two prototypes are what we have initially set out to do.

Fortunately for us, we still have time to make changes and simplify the overly complex site.


Design 2 - Less than five clicks initiative

For the second design, we decided to put an organizer calendar as the central theme for the whole platform with rotating icons at the bottom to serve as links to features. Hence, the depth is not as complicated as before, and users do not need many clicks to get to where they want.

This was again tested with users and this helped us in coming up with the third low-fi prototype.

Design 3 - Revamped for better functionality and aesthetics

In this design, the communications icon was separated into two - forum and announcements - for lower hierarchy of accessibility. The interface will be as graphical as possible to enhance user experience. An add task bar will also be included at the side. However, as commented by Mr. Reddy, we will need to seek a better link betweeen the task bar as well as the calendar. Also, how do we navigate users through the website such that they know that they are already in a project page.


Reflections - Back to a more comfortable position

Having got the design right again, we will do some more testing before proceeding onto the high-fi final product of this assignment. The process has been rather intense, and at times, stressful for us all. But hey.. we are going to get through this fine.