On Wednesday, March 4th, we hosted a TechGirlz workshop (Thinking Like a Digital Designer: Unplugged) here at our Optum Raleigh site. The overall focus of the workshop was to introduce participants to a couple Design Thinking methodologies and best practices.
We began the workshop with introductions and then moved into understanding what user experience is. The participants wrote love letters to their favorite apps, the most popular being TikTok and Instagram. This activity helped us understand what makes a good user experience and that “good” user experiences often share similar qualities and features.
The core of the workshop was focused on building out personas and wireframes for the girls’ app ideas. Participants completed the persona template (see below) in order to dive into the minds of their users. They were able to understand, at a much deeper level, the challenges, goals, wants, and needs of potential users for their apps. Because of this, participants were able to add features to their apps’ wireframes that will ultimately increase usage and better the user experience for their users.
Persona Template
After completing personas, we used iPhone and iPad wireframe templates (see below) to build out first draft wireframes for our app ideas. By leveraging the personas we built out, participants were able to create features for their apps that solved for their personas’ challenges and met their goals and needs.
Overall, this workshop created an extremely fun and collaborative environment that allowed everyone in the room to step into the shoes of a Digital Designer. Understanding how important it is to start the ideation process with having empathy for your users will allow us to create better and more effective products.
Sometimes all you need is a pen and a piece of paper to start building out an idea!
Is your company interested in inspiring girls to explore technology? Volunteer to host a TechGirlz workshop and we’ll help you with the rest!
