Indigenous Friends Association
Creating a Digital Safe Space for Indigenous Communities
Indigenous Friends Association (IFA) is a tech social enterprise that’s designed to create a digital safe space for their users where they can meet and explore new communities while expressing their thoughts without being judged.
Role: UX Designer
The Problem Space
There are countless indigenous communities out there with no relation to each other. Being isolated in a community since childhood can lead to curiosity of the outside world. IFA decided that the best way to tackle this issue is to help these people explore communities that shares a similar culture as them. However, even within the app, users seemed to face some troubles in trying to meet new people and connect with diverse communities.
The Solution
"How might we bring indigenous communities together through games so that they can meet new people and enlarge their connections?"
Project Constraints to Consider
Designing an end to end experience for the game feature in a span of two weeks.
Staying true to IFA's brand colours as it represents the Indigenous medicine wheel.
Wasn't able to personally interview users, so I had to assume that the information I got was true.
IFA's Users and Understanding Them
Before diving straight into designing a solution, I came up with a persona to better understand which users will most likely be participating in these bingo games.
Taking it to Pen and Tablet
Once all the information was gathered, I took it to my tablet to sketch out some possible screens that could well represent how the basic structure of the UI could look like.
Wireframes
Upon approval from my team, I translated the sketches into wireframes. I made sure that all the necessary components were needed for the transition between screens in order to create a working prototype to test.
User Test
Upon approval from my team, I translated the sketches into wireframes. I made sure that all the necessary components were needed for the transition between screens in order to create a working prototype to test.
Task 1: Can you sign up for the Career Path bingo game?
Task 2: Create your bingo card for the Career path bingo game.
Task 3: As the game starts, can you check off the drawn bingo slots?
Task 4: If you get bingo, notify the admin of the game and rate your overall experience with the game.
Key Findings
During the test session, I was able to really determine what worked and what didn’t. My testers were able to give me their unbiased opinions and express what they were feeling throughout the whole process. From this, I was able to change what didn’t work and refine my designs.
Some of the findings:
Positive
1. Users were able to find a bingo game easily.
2. Users said they thought the process was neat.
3. Navigation icons proved to work well.
Negative
1. Users had a lot of assumptions when creating a bingo card.
2. Hesitated when trying to find out how to start the bingo game.
3. Users didn’t realize there were notifications.
Iteration
After the user testing session, I realized that the testers hesitated and were confused at some point during the second and third task. To minimize the confusion, I decided to focus the iteration process to those two tasks.
Task 2: Create your bingo card for the Career path bingo game.
Task 3: As the game starts, can you check off the drawn bingo slots?
Final Solution
By understanding the users and user testing potential solutions, I was able to come up with a design that helps break the ice when indigenous communities try to come together for the first time.
Demo Of The Bingo Game
Check out how the bingo game works.
Reflection
IFA tasked me with creating a bingo game that can act as an icebreaker for indigenous communities to come together. Since this was my first time designing a game, I had to look for countless inspiration and determine the best way to approach it.
Through this process, I learned the amount of attention to detail it requires to create a simple game such as bingo. From CTA's to the navigation between screens, everything had to be thoughtfully placed to create a seamless experience for the users.
After user testing my potential solution, I also learned that my assumptions are never right and that I always have to test them with users to find out if it works or not.
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