Brief
The Georgia Aquarium Dive Operations manages all diving activities of the 120 volunteers and staff. Operations is composed of maintenance, animal care, research, and training. A dive log is necessary for the purposes of safety and record keeping. Dive tenders were looking to digitize the operation by making a tablet solution for dive tenders.
THE TEAM AND MY ROLE
1 product manager
1 researcher
1 product designer (me)
My responsibilities were to do research, interview, mockup, prototype, and user test our ideas. I also acted as cameraman and videographer.
METHODOLOGIES
Google Venture Design Sprint > Requirements Gathering > Comparative & Competitive Analysis > Market Research > Affinity Map > User Flows > Sketching, Live Prototyping > User Testing.
Dive Tenders?
Serve as standby divers during emergencies.
Record key dive information (ie. location, designated person in charge).
Record diver information (i.e. objective, time in and out, tank PSI numbers).
The problem
The dive log consists of staff filling out over 70+ sheets of paper every time a dive takes place.
Because of this:
• Lots of human error.
• Not always done on time.
• It’s a tiresome process.
The design sprint
Because the team only had 3 weeks to get a working prototype together, we decided to try Google Venture’s “Design Sprint” methodology to fail fast, fail often, and learn all within a week. We used the remaining time in our deadline to iterate on design and user testing.
Day 1: Meet stakeholders
Met with stakeholders to discuss business requirements and what they envision the goal to be: making an easy-to-use dive log tablet app.
We got a simplified workflow of how the current process goes:
Getting tasks from the dive tender.
Filling out dive logs into paper form, then documenting them into the computer.
Day 2: Research and prep
Conducted research on aquarium and dive terminology.
Listed questions to ask the staff:
“What is the typical diver’s day?”
“How do dive tanks and location impact dives?”
“What kind of information needs to be tracked?”
“What kinds of dives are there?”
Framed "how might we" questions to solve for.
Day 3: Out into the field
Documented daily operations the staff performed. This gave us a more ethnographic feel to the user flow we had to account for.
Interviewed multiple people on:
What did they do?
What kinds of information they had to capture?
Who did they work with?
Why do they keep coming back to volunteer?
What do they enjoy or dislike about the dive log?
Took lots of pictures and video to get a immersive feel of how everything plays together.
Day 4 & 5: Getting a prototype ready
Started out with mapping out the user flows for the different dive types.
Created mood board to gather inspiration from:
Competitive dive logs available.
Colors and iconography to reflect the Georgia Aquarium.
Did comparative research to make the dive log experience familiar to people and make it a more personalized-feeling app. We didn’t want it to feel too scientific.
Got UI elements from how internet browsers use tabs and how it organizes information.
Whiteboard sketches and kept iterating until we had a prototype that fit the requirements.
Took wireframes to high-fidelity, then went into prototyping
User testing and insights …
After we had a working prototype, we took it to the aquarium to try it out.
We were met with lots of important feedback:
“I don’t know what to do next”
“I don’t know what to click”
“What if I made a mistake?”
So we took the prototype back and iterated a few times to solve each problem.
Then finally, we ended with, “My mind is blown.”
Outcome
Spoke with developers about feasibility.
Talked about taking the prototype to the national level to make it available for all aquariums.
Delivered to aquarium director to continued work in the future.