REFLECTION
Despite the unrelenting due dates and the sometimes hectic coordination, in retrospect, the entire project has been an amazing experience for everyone involved. For many on the team, this is their first time putting their conceptual knowledge of human-centered design into practice, going through the entire design process and creating an actual product that may benefit the community one day.
We started out barely knowing what to do. We even had trouble deciding on what user group to begin with—there were some strong opinions about which direction the project should take. In the end, we had to learn to compromise in order to work as a team. After nine weeks of hard work, it is safe to say that we are all exceedingly satisfied with our achievement. It was not easy to coordinate people with busy schedules, and sometimes the deadlines could prove demanding. But we worked it out. Everyone had their own unique characters to contribute to the team, be it technical expertise, organizational skill, or enthusiasm. Without any of us, LinkNow would not be a possibility.
We do recognize the structural limitations of our project—the principal challenge being time. Human-Centered design could always use more interviews, more research, more iterations. If we could have had more time to work with, we would have definitely conducted a much more thorough user research, and perhaps expand the user group to include more diverse populations than just college students. In our early ideation phase, we also envisaged a completely separate interface of the application for volunteer organizations, but due to time and resource constraints, it had to be scrapped. Our project is far from perfect, but we are confident that LinkNow can become a successful platform for future volunteers.
