ChatWave

Chatwave was a project I worked on as part of a 3rd year design course. This project was intended to develop our UX research skills as well as our capabilities with interface design. The goal was to develop an interface to solve a problem for the group of people within our chosen domain space.

Image of two phones with the chatwave app open

Project Overview

ChatWave was a five-week project in which we were tasked with designing for a specific domain space. Our group chose to focus on cognitive disabilities, specifically ADHD. Through extensive UX research, we developed an interface designed specifically to address the needs of people within our chosen domain. ChatWave is a message compiler system that integrates many of a user's messaging and email apps into one interface, making the process of reading, responding, and finding messages and emails simpler.

My Role

I was primarily responsible for user research, prototyping and took a secondary role in the visual design.

The Team

Baseer Joya

Keith Law

Gabriel Bastos

The Task

Through our research process, our team was tasked with identifying 2 problems within our domain space through which we could create a design solution. Through the process, the team conducted interviews, surveys and collected data from various research articles to help us identify interface problems for ADHD users.

Cognitive Load in Interface Design

ADHD users have difficulty maintaining focus and blocking out distractions which can be exacerbated by interfaces that struggle to accommodate them. Effective interface design must minimize distractions and support sustained attention for ADHD users.

Information Retrieval in Interface Design

ADHD users also have difficulty with memory, frequent reminders and effective methods to retrieve forgotten information.

Initial Prototype

After our rounds of research was done it was time to develop a visual prototype of our app. As you can see, this was our first iteration of the app. While the visual look changed extensively, what we gathered from this intitial process was a structure and framework for how the app would be designed. Specifically, the sorting feature at the top and the labelling system to indicate priority of the message would become foundational features in our design.

Screenshot of the initial visual design of chatwave

The App

After developing our initial prototype and landing on features that would form the foundation of the app, we developed a finished prototype. The core features we implemented as a response to our research were: a curated notification system meant to mitigate the likelihood of our users becoming overwhelmed by notifications, and a sorting system that would sort messages according to user preference [priority, recency, unread, app].

Sorting

The sorting feature we implemented was designed to target ADHD users and their concerns with information retrieval. In addition to general sorting options like unread and recency of the message we added a few more options. As the lead in prototyping I presented the idea of having a priority sorting feature and a category sorting feature. The priority feature allows the system to determine the urgency of a message and color codes each message to rank urgency. Our category sort system uses the labels of the contact to organize messages. Categories included work, social, family and school.

Notifications

Our research also led us to find that ADHD users can be overwhelmed with cluttered interfaces and an overabundance of notifications. This led us to develop a notification system where notifications are delivered at set times for users. Instead of dealing with notifications throughout the day, users can alot a specific time in the day where they can go through their phone and see the notifications.

Reflection

The process of developing the app taught me valuable lessons in user research, transforming insights into actionable solutions, and becoming comfortable with abandoning prior assumptions when necessary. It emphasized the importance of continuously identifying and addressing problems throughout the design journey. I learned how to adapt and iterate based on real feedback, ensuring the final product truly met the needs of the users.