UX Case Study: X-RAY Helpdesk Application. research to prototype to usability plan.

X-Ray was a five week project to bring an idea from concept to prototype and then create a usability plan to test it. I started an informal survey of the I.T. department where I work and found three common needs they would want in a Helpdesk Application on their phone.

I discovered that many popular Helpdesk systems have an API token that would allow the application to access their databases. One item I decided I would like to test out is what items from their Helpdesk system would they want access to. If data was pretty aligned I would know if the application needed the ability to be customizable or not which would drastically change development scope if not needed on launch. 

Another concept I found in my research was using Computer Vision technology to effortlessly lock on to a QR code (or mapped image) and have the app automatically react with a result when triggered. Vuforia is a company that offers a free tier package that can be used along with ARKit in the app development for iOS (can also work with ARCore for android phones). 

With this information I sketched out some wireframes out on pen and paper and then uploaded the images into a service called Marvel and created a quick prototype. 

After catching a few missing links in the flow, I created mid-fi digital wireframes off the sketches and updated my Marvel prototype to use as a guide for creating my Usability Research Plan.

After creating my prototype I made a list of 4 tasks I would like the respondents to perform in my usability study. 

I then created my user research plan and ran through it with a few colleagues and classmates for practice.

At the conclusion of this five week project I learned how important it is to have the people you are creating the test for be the people testing it (but when in doubt, another point of view always contains some value). With the information provided from the initial research I would like to add the ability to filter tickets by date, priority, and if it is open or closed.

Now that I also have more experience generating prototypes, I would like to bring this project into a more functional state for future user testing with people in the I.T. Industry to see if this project would be something that would make their job just a little bit easier.