Our client project was to design an app for administrators, staff, volunteers and riders to create, edit, and view schedules and profiles for a therapeutic horse riding center called RED Arena.

Working With A Client

Intuitively, when working with a client, I’d first ask “what are the main reasons for your redesign?” This will allow me to identify what processes need to be optimize when designing. But for this project, first, the technical requirements were gathered by a backend developer, which informed the the design requirements which were gathered by another designer, passed to me, and then I had the opportunity to gather auxillary requirements during a 1:Many client interview. Additional requirements trickled in during the design process as other groups continued to ask questions during.

The biggest challenge of this project was figuring out what needed to be done and learning how to keep requirements straight. I’m super meticulous and I take instructions seriously and literally. Which is a blessing when those things are clear, and a total curse when things are all over the place, because I can’t let things slip through the cracks.

And that’s something that definitely will occur in the design world. Adding requirements, changing requirements, scope creep. I’m glad that this project didn’t shelter us from the reality of those things because they are very important to navigate.

My solution was to use a combination of trello, and a physical to-do list in order to keep all the requirements straight. If I had more time, I would have probably made a single github repo with all of these things.

Working With Another Designer

Interestingly, I did not find it too difficult to work with my partner, but I did diverge quite a bit from the rest of the designers in terms of what I thought the user experience of this app should be. The way that I approached this problem was to take a step back, ask if all of our UX needed to be the same, and suggest leaving the element that we were diverging on, to be up to the individual groups.

What I would have done in a real world scario is go with the majority (because in a way, that is data) but suggest running an A/B test on the alternative user experience to prove that it is the best / most intuitive one.

Overall

I enjoyed this project because I got to focus on the elements that play to my strengths - project management, planning, strategy, and UX. My partner got to focus on the layers that she liked as well, so we both ended up happy and feeling accomplished at the end of the weekend.