This module has really given me a lot of knowledge regarding the importance of user research and the methods of gather data to create an intuitive product for a target audience. This was the first time that I had to gather some first-hand data, I did this by interviewing some students.

Initially my idea was to create an app that would mimic the likes of the dating app Tinder, on this app users would find a house they’d like to live in and that would direct them to a screen showcasing others who have also chosen said home, they would them read about the people who have chosen the home and swipe right if they think they can live with that person, they would swipe left if they didn’t feel like they are compatible with person. But upon more research I realise that many others had a similar idea when it came to helping students find an accommodation hence I deviated from this idea and focused elsewhere; and throughout my research I uncovered the difficulties students go through when it comes to find a job, maintaining the job and balancing it with their university schedule and personal or social life time. This consequently led to me doing my qualitative research (user interviews) and this helped me know what needed to be done to accommodate my target audience.

This module was very research focused and I’m not going to lie am not a big fun of researching but I somehow enjoyed the research that I conducted during my project, and I think it’s because I heavily related to it and empathised a lot with the consumer. During this module has really helped me a lot in terms of understanding user needs and this is something that I will be carrying on into the future. Though I must say that the research phase was a bit too long because it got to a certain point where I couldn’t find any more valuable data, besides that stress another thing that stressed me were the class group projects we conducted, I understood the importance of those exercises but I feel as though they held me back from focusing on my project. I especially found the topic “Service Design” very helpful as it has helped me realised that it is it’s all about thinking about a user’s entire journey and experience, it doesn’t end when the user accomplishes their goals, it goes beyond it by assisting them if anything else comes up on their end; this is achieved with a great deal of communication between the service provider and the consumer.

During my project I knew that there were similar services out there but none of them offer the same flexibility as mine does, and this is because those part time jobs require more commitment which makes students feel as though they’re in a tight spot; whereas my service allows them to pick where they want to work, how long they want to work, and they even get the choice to cancel some shifts if they want. I’d say the real challenge I faced in this project was my research phase, because as I mentioned prior I dreaded doing it but I knew it had to be done, what drove me to do it successfully was placing my users’ needs first because I wanted to create a product that addressed real student problems, and in order to do so I had to capture and step into my users’ everyday challenges; the likes of Shafi demanded empathy, thorough research, and careful consideration of both financial stress and academic demands.

I feel as though this project has helped me understand my consumers concerns and how to tackle them with the use of an intuitive UI, and I believe I have achieved this with my product by not bombarding the user with a lot of information at once as I learned from the likes of “Miller’s Law”. Besides this I feel as though I was familiar with most of the content that was covered in this module because they have been talked about before in previous modules; my main takeaway from this module is the importance of user research/ interviews, and service design

This module had some insightful areas but if I’m being honest, I didn’t enjoy it as much as previous modules as I think that it didn’t allow me to focus on my research due to all the exercise we conducted in class. Despite this I have gained in depth knowledge that I will be carrying onto my placement.