Event: Disrupt 2013 Hackathon
Site: http://goldf.in (Live during Hackathon)
Site: http://goldf.in (Live during Hackathon)
In April of 2013 I attended the Disrupt 2013 Conference and participated in the Disrupt Hackathon. I teamed up with 2 developer friends, Aaron Foss and Fred Jambukaswaran, and over 24 hours concepted, designed, built and presented a fully functioning mobile application aimed at helping high school students narrow the field of almost 7,500 schools in the US to apply to by answering a series of simple Yes/No questions.
My role in the team was branding, design, IA, UI, and UX.
The Ah-hah moment
Our focus for the app was to narrow the dataset (of 7,500) to a manageable list in less than 9 seconds. By structuring the questions correctly, we were able to slice the data significantly, getting the results list down to a very managable amount in about 8- 10 questions (depending on the user's path).
The problem was it was taking too long to read and answer each question. The solution revealed itself as we were debating how the questions should look. I thought "why not strip the UI down? Use the established feature of swiping and the familiar UX of forward motion (moving to the right to continue) and allow the user to answer each question by simply swiping right to answer yes, and left to answer no?"
It worked, and it worked beautifully.
The instructional screen for the Goldf.in app uses the swipe gesture of saying yes to start the survey. By asking the user to interact with primary UI at this stage, we prime them for faster input.
Watch the actual presentation on AOL Video: http://on.aol.com/video/goldf-in-demo-517760593
That's Aaron doing the presentation (after almost 24 hours without any sleep). I'm running the app behind him at the podium.
That's Aaron doing the presentation (after almost 24 hours without any sleep). I'm running the app behind him at the podium.
