Well, the main reasons actually are:
1. There are no existing products that fulfil this role on the market currently.
2. There is an increasing popularity with healthy lifestyle and could mean an increase in demand for such events.
Affectionately called the Plan-a-Thon, the application will be web-based, created in Flash. It will help automate some processes while giving a clear list of things for the planner to do.
Some sample drawings are included below. Please pardon the lousy art.
The finalists are the 1st and 2nd sketch. We are kind of deciding on which one to choose.
The 2nd one makes the process more procedural, where the user follows a fixed procedure to plan for the marathon, like making payments online, this will probably be easier for people new to planning marathons.
The 1st option is more functional based, where each icon consists of a collection of function that would be needed in planning a marathon, this would probably be a lot easier for more experienced planners. There is a to-do list for the 1st sketch to help the new planners as well.
We are probably leaning towards the 1st sketch, but we will get in some survey data on our user base before we decide.
sketches! (:
ReplyDeleteimho, there's no such thing as lousy art. it's highly subjective right...
anyway,
good to know that you're gonna find out more from your target users before deciding which layout to develop.
remember it's not the cool factor that counts, it's what you've done to know that your design decisions are based on users' needs.
so it's always good to go back to the users (find the right target audience) and learn from them what are the primary tasks that they want to achieve from such system. and help them achieve it in a pleasing yet effective way.
don't trash your own work too early before evaluating it with the users; you may be surprised to know that sometimes what the trashed initial sketches are actually what delights the users!
don't hesitate to sketch and experiment, and evaluate it accordingly. you'll never know until you try it.
good luck!
-chris.p