ResearchEquals – Launching 02.2022
In mid-2021, after much reflection upon the data and numerous researcher interviews, we at Liberate Science made the decision to retire our distributed desktop app in favor of a platformed web app.
What We Learned
We took stock of all the lessons we learned and data we gathered through designing and developing the desktop app, and channeled that into the creation of the web app.
Here are a few key lessons:
- Allow for greater scalability in regards to content and authors.
- While the previous progressive design was well received, no need to visually present so avant-garde.
- Adjust design and development methodologies and methods to account for changes in the makeup of the team.
How We’ll Do It
Since the formation of Liberate Science, the design and development teams have collaborated daily. We analyzed how we liked to work while developing the desktop app, and codified those lessons.
Here are some things we wanted to focus on:
- Choose a design and development method for daily incremental progress, i.e. no forging too far ahead, or waiting for the other team to finish.
- Modify the Double Diamond design method to fit our purposes with both designers and developers partaking in each of the phases.
- Utilize the full power of tools like Figma (yay! interactive components!) so that designs and prototypes can be created rapidly and consistently.
- Utilize resource saving libraries and tools (e.g. use Google’s Noto Typeface to save time with localization in the future).
- Simplify user flows and navigation first before any development work is started.
We are still in the process of developing the web app, but it is slated for release in February 2022. Included here are some insights into our design process.
User Flow – FigJam
Low-Fidelity Sketching
High-Fidelity Style Definition
We created some style definition as early as possible, so that engineering could build simultaneously as the high-fidelity screens are created.
