Day 3 & 4 of Avocademy Designathon - Ideation

On Day 3, both Fernanda and I spent most of the day doing pre-scheduled external stuff, so we couldn't focus on the designathon, but we were still able to move on with the process a little bit. On day 4, we had a meeting to discuss what we were able to do on the previous day, and work on brainstorming some solutions and creating user flows.

Day 3 & 4 - Wednesday & Thursday

To recap, we were now with our user persona, problem statement and hypothesis statements in hands, so we have a better understanding of the user and the problem we are trying to solve.

• Crazy 8s: a quick ideation exercise to brainstorm possible solutions to our problem.

• User flow: to visualize how the users would interact with one of the solutions we proposed.

== Crazy 8s (brainstorm) ==

We started to list some ideas that could be used for our solution based on the previous steps of research and user/problem definition:

Since we would not be able to meet for a 1:1 meeting on Wednesday, I suggested that we should do an ideation exercise called Crazy 8s, which I learned in one of Elize Presents workshops. It should be done individually and then each member of the team will present their ideas; it's a nice way to brainstorm solutions in quick and effective way. I got a template in FigJam and briefly presented the exercise to Fernanda through a written message.

I made my Crazy 8s and then added comments on each screen so that Fernanda could access my line of thought as soon as she got home from her appointment and read them before our next meeting. She did the same, but she opted to write down her ideas on the comments and leave the sketches for the prototype phase - I actually wasn't very clear about how the exercise works when I wrote the instructions, but I think Fernanda did a great job explaining her vision for the solution.

So, as you can see, I wanted to add as many visual aids as possible to the interface, such as different graphs, cards, etc, so that the content is broken down into chunks of information. This way, the user will be able to digest the financial content little by little and, if they decide to learn more or move on and apply for any kind of money reallocation, they would become more and more confident about the subject.

It was also in this phase that we discussed if we wanted to create:

• a brand new financial app;

• a feature that could be implemented in any financial or bank app.

Due to the time constraints, we decided to focus on a feature that any financial literacy/organization app or bank app could benefit from. This way, we didn't have to worry about flows or wireframes for other steps such as account creation, onboarding, etc.

== User Flow ==

That being said, our flow would start from a bank or financial app dashboard. We came up with some user flows based on the brainstorming session, where we were able to see how long and easy the process for the user would be.

The idea is that the user opens the app to check their financial status and, when the AI of the app recognizes a match between user and "money reallocation", they will receive a popup message inviting the user to explore the matching opportunities.

A modal then will be displayed to show the list of opportunities and the user can start their learning journey little by little. At the end, they will decide if they want to apply for the investment or not.

== Days 3 & 4 Learnings ==

1. This was my first time doing a Crazy 8s on a computer and - damn - it was really hard to control the cursor to sketch in comparison with pen and paper. It was a good way to share it with Fernanda, but since I turned the visibility of my sketches off to not influence her designs, I should have explained better how the exercise works, but the way she did, by writing her ideas out within 8 minutes, was really good to exercise creativity, I think.

2. User flows should be straightforward as much as possible so that the user will have the least friction as possible in their journey, so even though I created other flows for different ideas, the one Fernanda created was more to the point and included the major discovery features that we wanted to include in our idea.

3. Since Fernanda was away, I used Wednesday to prepare myself for an interview that was coming up on the following Friday afternoon. I was happy that I was able to offer something to Avocademy designathon even though I was stressed out and anxious about the interview.

===

Coming up next, you will see how the final day went and take a look at the wireframes and prototype we came up with :)