BBC GEL
A guide to iOS & Android asset creation
Research and document best practises on a ‘how to’ guide for BBC GEL.For the purposes of this project, I needed to understand how BBC UX&D teams create assets for iOS and Android, so I could document the process.
Understand.
When a user interface (UI) is created, it is broken down to assets before its build again by the developers. There are many platforms and formats to design for; some individuals have made efforts to understand define a method. Leading mobile platforms offer their extensive UI guidelines, but there isn’t a practice to streamline design for iOS and Android. To understand the problem, I used the AEIOU and ethnographic framework as a lens to research, observe the design environment and design my topic guide.
Create.
AEIOU is a framework to remind researchers to document and code information under a set of five categories.
Activities: sets of user actions and workflows.
Environments: workspaces where activities take place.
Interactions: between people or objects and computers.
Objects: what are the objects and devices people use in their environment.
Users: are people whose behaviours, preferences and needs are recorded. What are their values?
AEIOU and Desk research
I have adapted the framework to code my findings. In doing so, I gained a broader perspective of the asset design workflow, the designers’ workspace needs and the collaborative role they have with developers.
AEIOU and User Interviews
During field observation, I have used the AEIOU framework as a lens to record observations under each category, supplementing comments with photos or screenshots I gathered from remote and face to face user testing.
Deliver.-
I organised a workshop following a KJ Technique to analyse information and prioritise findings through stakeholder engagement. KJ is a silent technique that allows stakeholders to have a say in the process, and it also helped me save time. Together we clustered observations, disseminated higher-level themes from common patterns and prioritised these through voting.
Recommendations
I then added quantitative data along with users quotes to derive to recommendations and then gave an example of how these can be actioned. The resulting outcome can be seen here today at BBC GEL Guidelines titled as “How to create assets for apps.”