Studio Brief 2 - Initial Crit

This morning we had our first crit for this studio brief (Design for Print). I presented two ideas which I thought were the better ones that I had in mind, which was the food shazam app and the english translation app.  In the crit people thought the english to english translation app was much better and interesting that the food shazam app which I also agreed with. They thought I could do a lot more with what information I can include in the app in order to increase and improve the user experience. In addition, they also said that it would be really good for using it on standard English's like American English that is quite different to British English. They also added how it will be quite useful for students who just moved to another city; which I thought was good because that is literally what I'd like the app to do and function as. And, due to this we also started to talk about possibly adding slangs from different areas which I thought might be a good addition to my original idea.

Feedback from crit:

• Add 'slangs' - They suggested I could add slangs as well and modified words into it. Whilst in the crit I thought it would be a nice add on and option in the app; so I thought it was quite a good idea and suggestion that I thought I could use in my app. However, after reevaluating itI feel like it would be quite hard for me to implement this idea, as I feel like it could be it's whole own app itself as there are also so much slangs in different cities and countries therefore I feel like if I was to incorporate this in my app it would just make it quite complicated and hard to use. I do think it's a good idea though however, it might overlap with my idea and would make the UI complicated therefore making the UX complicated as well. In addition, this is also too similar to Urban Dictionary, therefore it might not be as effective and useful as there's already another website dedicated to it.
• Put the language options as a list - In the crit someone suggested to put the language options in list so that it's easier to use and navigate around. I think navigation wise, it would be quite handy as a phone screen has a longer height than width. In addition, for this idea I thought may be I can put the first language option box on the top of the screen in order for users to put their main english language as their default language; and below is other language box with the the list other english languages standards used. 
• Add the 'context' the word/phrase can be used in, in the definition - Someone suggested that should also include the context in which the word/phrase can be used it. I was actually thinking about including this as well, as I am trying to inform the users where and how they can use them. I think I can probably do this by creating and using example sentences to give a scenario and by doing this I am also giving the users the context behind the sentence and use of the word/phrase.

I also asked a question in the crit that hopefully I could get opinions from:

• Should it be an app or an add on to an existing app or website? - majority of the people said I should keep it separate as it already have a lot of content and enough to explore from that it will stand well on it's own already. If I was to have it as an add on, it may just make the whole website too confusing or complicated and end up giving the users bad UX for it's complicated UI.

Thoughts & Reflections:

Overall, I think it was a pretty good crit and the people in the crit also gave me really good suggestions that I could think about to include in my app. In addition, I also thought that people in the crit had some really good ideas e.g. someone thought of creating a site which students can sign up on where they can collaborate and possibly exchange skills with each other; someone else had an idea of having an app which lets new university students to communicate together and meet people with similar hobbies as them to meet up in real life and do activities together. I thought these ideas where really good and they pinpointed their target audiences perfectly and an idea which will be effective for their target audience, giving them good UX and possible long term benefits as well e.g. gaining experience and bulking up student portfolio and gaining new friends and settle in the new city quickly. I think this crit was very good and beneficial as the people in my group gave me good feedback that I can work with whilst I also saw their ideas giving me a good sense of how I should also think about my app - the users don't only need to have good UX through good UI but also give them good benefits in general in order for them to keep using the app in the long term.