NDinfo
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summary
NDinfo is an emergency apps for natural disasters. It allows users to learn about certain natural disasters and receive alerts for impending dangerous events.
People often panic when a natural disaster comes up. This application will allow users to learn about such natural disasters beforehand, during, and after the emergency to prepare for important next steps.
role
tasks
tools
time
why was NDinfo created?
As you grow up, you tend to pay more attention to the news around you and your family. More wildfires and hurricanes have become present in recent times and people need to stay prepared for these situations. In case of an emergency, NDinfo wants to help protect users when it comes to times like these.
challenge
When a natural disaster is on its way or about to occur, people often panic without planning what to do next.
goal
Create a mobile application that provides useful information regarding natural disasters. Inform and assist users with any steps they need to take during such an emergency.
solution
Preventing users from the last minute planning, this application will warn users when a natural disaster will possibly occur soon (when possible). Additionally, the software will inform users of the next steps they should take before the disaster occurs.
empathizing with a natural disaster situation
Understanding how users will come across this app calls for a storyboard. Coming up with a possible situation about how someone discovers NDinfo helps us brainstorm features that will be helpful for the users.
observing our competitors
I decided to choose two other apps with similar goals and analyze their features to help push NDinfo towards the right direction.
FEMA
A personalized disaster resource to help plan, protect, and recover from any natural disaster.
- pages are easily accessible from nav bar
- user can input multiple locations to get alerts from
- shows DRCs nearby, as well as throughout the states
- most buttons lead to an external page instead of within the app
- not customizable to user's needs
American Red Cross Emergency
All-hazard weather safety app that monitors, alerts, and helps prepare for any scenario.
- mimics short-form content (helps when users don't want to read)
- live maps providing areas that are being impacted by certain weather conditions (hurricanes, rain, snow, wind speed, etc.)
- confusing navigation and workflow
- to-do list and toolkit has an unclear purpose
how will people use this mobile app?
In order to understand how people will come across NDinfo, we have to analyze these competitors to figure out how we can stand out in a group of them.
utilizing a user journey map
Continuing from our storyboard, this user journey map goes into the different reasons that a user may need this app. We are able to take a users pain points and expand these ideas to create opportunities from them.
how can users navigate our app?
After observing what features work and don’t work based on other apps, I finalized NDinfo’s features and created a workflow chart to showcase how the user will easily navigate through the software.
a look into using NDinfo's app
I created an additional storyboard to emphasize how users will use the NDinfo app throughout a natural disaster — a hurricane.
how we started designing
branding the business
Since NDinfo is a new company, I had to create a style guide to showcase their branding. This would include everything we would need to create the businesses mobile application.
what does NDinfo's app look like?
Lastly, I designed some mid-fidelity wireframes that highlight the app's main features: the natural disaster information page and a page where users can buy supply kits straight from NDinfo.
reflections
This was a short project and due to time constraints, the app wasn’t finished—though I felt that it would’ve made a strong impact to its users. With this challenge, I was still able to learn a lot about empathizing with users and some steps to do so.
successes
- empathizing with users through journey maps and storyboards
- creating new features to stand out from other apps (supply kits based on the natural disaster)
challenges
- brainstorming scenarios to create storyboards for the first time
- understanding how workflow charts work
key learning
- storyboards, user journey maps, and workflow charts (first time making these)
- downloading competitor apps to analyze their strengths and weaknesses
next steps
- designing more pages and creating high-fidelity wireframes/prototypes to demonstrate how users can use the app
- figuring out the target audience and conducting usability testing on potential users
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