Burnout: The Car Finding App

My First Project

Art and graphic design never came naturally to me and it was one of my weaknesses as a child. With my first real introduction to the world of UX, this class focused on UX/UI principles.  

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Understanding visual design concepts felt at times as if I was Sisyphus. With continued practice and adapting the skills being taught in class, I was able to roll the boulder up the mountain.

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This project was a friend of mine's idea he and his friends had for a car app. As I was asking him questions about his idea along with explaining to me the problem he saw in car culture, I made a realization. I realized that I was doing a bit of empathy mapping, user interviews, and surprisingly of all, stakeholder communication. I felt this process of researching felt natural and organic. I saw the importance of creating a solid foundation going beyond an interface became critical in designing strong user experiences. 

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My friend's problem was about car culture that he and a few of his friends experienced when recommending cars to people. I was asking him to elaborate on his problem while I was empathizing with him in finding a way to solve his problem. 

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For research, I spent time learning more about car culture. Although the class I was in was focused on UI, I felt a need to understand my users first. I asked my friend about his experience at a race legal event along with going to the drag strip.

At the time of this project, I did not dive deeply into UX Research because the class this assignment was for was geared toward UI principles. However, naturally working with my friend who acted as a stakeholder taught me the need for understanding my users' behavior and cognition when they interact with technology and the experience surrounding the technology.

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Looking back at this design, there is a lot I would change from building a design system, following appropriate design guidelines, building a more comprehensive information architecture, more user testing, qualitative and quantitative research to justify features and experiences, and even some ethnographic studies to understand car culture on a deeper level, plus learn more about the diverse subcultures of gearheads. I also would want to go back to the ideation board and have new design sprints in creating a strong experience first by creating more strongly defined personas outside of my stakeholders. 

With all that said, I feel it's better to leave this project as-is. I believe in a growth mindset and knowing where I came from to where I am now has allowed me to reflect on the past in order to build the foundation for a brighter future. 

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