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Over the course of the iterative design process we learned several things of what goes into a solid website design. What we found to be the most important is taking note of feedback and incorporating those comments into our design as much as possible.
Lessons Learned:
If we had the opportunity to redo the project all over again, we would spend more time about thinking how the UI would connect with the backend. We hoped to have a more complete website in terms of how it interacts with the backend but that is not the case. While the focus of the project was on providing users with a learnable and efficient interface, if we would have thought about how we would want to integrate the backend, we would have had a better transition in terms of working with node.js.
Additionally, we believe less time could have been spent on picking the correct fonts and colors. While coloring and font are important for the user experience, we could have set a strict amount of time for deciding which font and color scheme to use. This would have allowed for more time on less trivial components of the website.
During the iterative process of deciding which features to implement or which ones to leave out from our original designs, we took priority to the features that enhanced usability and the basic features that would solve the problem we were tackling in the first place.
After receiving feedback, we would take those opinions seriously but also took into consideration that everyone has a different experience with the UI. If there was a clear consensus as to whether a feature seemed unnecessary or hindered the usability, we would normally make the proper change. However, if there was a clear divide or a small population, we would go back and discuss how the user would benefit from the feature and whether it would need to be removed or modified slightly to please both the majority and the few that did not think it a good feature.
The process of iterative design and constant feedback was essential in building a learnable, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing user interface.