The Greenfield Series: Part 1
January 28, 2016On Monday I met with Eric Meyer and Chris Peak who introduced me to my new project. Eric wants to have all apprenticeship information centralized and in a place that’s easily accessible and can be viewed at any time. My mentor Chris, thought this would be a great opportunity to create something new.
A greenfield project
Basically, a greenfield project is one that is not constrained by any kind of past work. This is why I was so excited to be a part of a project like this. I essentially had total freedom to design whatever I wanted within the contents of what the client (Eric) wanted. There was a lot of work to be done. The ultimate goal was to create something that Eric found useful, but also brought value to other Craftsmen at 8th Light. With any project, a great starting point is sitting down and talking to potential users.
Do your research
We knew the data and features Eric wanted, but he suggested that this tool may have a use outside of just himself. The only way to find out was to actually talk to a group of users. It was important to me to figure out exactly what questions I wanted to ask. Was this data even important to them? How were they using the data? Was the individual currently having any difficulties trying to apply the data? I wanted to get as much information as possible before we even thought about what we were going to create.
Prior to starting, my co-mentor, Erica Garcia gave me some great advice. She cautioned me to think about how I was going to ask questions. She said that depending on how a question is asked, it may influence the user’s response.
Ask open-ended questions
From past jobs and school I knew that asking questions that warranted a response other than yes or no was a great place to start. Keeping Erica’s advice in mind, I created a small list of questions I could ask each individual.
- What is your position at 8th Light and how do you currently use apprenticeship data?
- How do you currently use apprenticeship data?
- How do you retrieve or access the data?
- Do you have any problems viewing the data?
- Would it be helpful if the data was centralized?
I thought answers to these questions would fuel the conversation and would ultimately add value when designing the app.
Don’t make any promises
The last thing we want to do during these interviews is make any promises. Promises that we should avoid may come in the form of features to an existing app, or the development of a new app. It was important that during the interview process we made it clear that we were in a user research stage.
Learning from our research
What we are learning is that each individual has their different needs when it comes to the data. What is very important to one person, may be hardly important to the next. Even though we still have a few more interviews to go, I feel like the bones of the project are starting to take shape.