Red Pen Tool

Analysis

Imaginary Friends

Being provided with a very functional brief for a specific target audience was a great help for the creation of user profiles and use cases. The process involved collaborating with our client to create imaginary 'actors' with jobs, interests, hobbies and skill sets. Our new imaginary friends (or typical users) were continually returned to throughout the design, implementation and testing process in order for us to regain the perspective of a user of the product and that the product was meeting the needs of the target user.

Be inspired, but don't steal

When making a new interface or design for an application like this it would be nice to confess that we sit in a room alone with pen, pad and our imagination but this is not how the creative process works. Before embarking on the visual design or interface layout we, like everyone else, trawl our preferred sources of inspiration to build upon the wealth of creativity before us.

Design

Canvas plus palette

Once again the simplest of solutions proved to be the most appropriate and elegant; following the analysis of the prospective user and the client's requirements it was agreed that the best way to proceed was to use a tried and tested interaction design pattern with a prestigious past - canvas and palette. MS Paint and MacPaint didn't require detailed instructions or guidance; powerful iconography and an intuitive user experience ensure the success of applications which model this type of interface. Therefore the design of the Red Pen Tool user interface (UI) was influenced by this.

Concepts : Interface & Iconography

Implementation

Prototype

This stage of the process was the realisation of what had become a well rounded product on paper and in our minds. The process of analysis and design does not necessarily involve any prototype work and therefore it can seem like a long time to wait until there is something to interact with. The benefit in this case however was that the implementation became a much more informed process and the ideas quickly became a usable prototype.

Feedback loop

Building the prototype product was extensively informed by the preceding stages; design and analysis. This implies a fairly rigid linear process (analysis — design — implementation) however each of the stages feeds back into its proceeding stage or stages.

Testing

Functional & Performance Testing

What appears to be fully functioning digital application is born! Or so you think. We use many different methods to test digital and web based products however only a select few are suitable for any one project. These processes can be for ensuring that individual functions work as expected - Functional Testing - or to ensure the application can process the required volumes of data - Load and Performance Testing. Although essential these tests tend to return some uninteresting statistics which require bug fixes, optimization and more testing.

User Acceptance

Although necessary the above methods do not add anything to the final user experience. User Acceptance Tests, however, are the final stage of validation and involve real users from the target demographic. This exhaustive and qualitative feedback gave us an opportunity to return to the analysis, design and implementation stages to make changes to the product which had tremendous effects on the final user experience.

Release

Integration

After nurturing the Red Pen Tool to this point there was nothing remaining but to release it to the wild (the client) so we worked closely with their technical team in order to integrate it into a larger system for electronic management and marking of students' coursework.

Enhancements

Following the successful integration of the tool we were later called upon to design a website enabling the Red Pen Tool to be accessed online on a pay-per-use model and also act as a marketing tool for the product. In order to ensure the continued success of the product the client has also applied for an international patent to secure the process of appending digital marks to students work.