Reflection – Prototyping

Challenge Description and Selection    A short time ago, I worked together with a team for a government office to find a way  to facilitate access to information for victims of gender violence. The information is  varied and includes, for example, advice to make their complaints, support centers,  statistical data, government actions in favor of women and a repository of data with  useful information. Unfortunately, my country has very high rates of violence against  women and the LGBT population.    After conducting surveys and interviews it was decided that the mass media par  excellence was a website. The challenge that awaited us was to build a website that  provides information focused on the victims and the population in general, and that  serves as a place to reach support for their special needs.    Tool Selection Description    Based on the interviews and focus groups carried out, it was decided to carry out the  Prototyping technique to design prototypes according to the following characteristics:  gender, age range, social condition, place, violence exercised by the father, violence  exercised by the couple, violence exercised by other people.    Functional web prototypes were made based on the analysis of the opinions of the  people who voluntarily participated in the interviews. Three prototypes were developed  for each group differentiated by the aforementioned characteristics in order to find the  best distribution of information and color elements according to their needs and then  the ideas were integrated to generate prototypes that unified the needs of all the  groups.     During the process, numerous refinements were carried out according to the guidelines  offered by the people who evaluated the prototypes, including the acquisition of  business intelligence software to present statistical information in an interactive way.      Insigth and Approach    The work was arduous due to the uniqueness of each profile, but it allowed discovering  an approach oriented towards the real needs of the person and what they expect from  a public institution in a country with great deficiencies and a lack of confidence in the  law. The use of prototypes is an effective tool to discover the comfort and usability after  the definition of mockups or sketching, and closely observe the generation of  confidence. In addition, the prototypes beyond supporting the final conception of the  web also allowed generating other services, such as a telephone exchange with  personnel specialized in violence issues and a chat for inquiries and receipt of  complaints.

The course has shown in an orderly manner how to achieve a product that meets  expectations based on the real needs of people internalizing their problems.

