I was tasked with creating a service for social good. Being a teacher, this was something I knew I could do! While I am not a Special Education teacher, I am normally the General Ed teacher that works with them. I immediately thought of students with special needs when approaching this project. I had a student that was very sensitive to loud noises. I wanted to create an app that families can use to get informed about places around the city. A review app that not necessarily for service but for functionality for someone with special needs. Maybe a place is awesome but it isn't great for someone that has sensory struggles. Maybe a place is great but it isn't great for people that have mobility issues. I know that sometimes people show up to places and they have to leave because it was just too much. I wanted to fix that. This project is something that I want to continue working on and am even going to patent.  
Where to start? 
I talked to Special Education teachers and parents of people with disabilities. Using their stories and my own knowledge of these cases, I created two personas. It was clear that one (teachers) wanted to help these families even outside of school, and two (families) needed to know ahead of time how a place might be set up. They would like to know before they show up to a place. 
Any competition?
I wanted to start with looking at direct and indirect competitors. In a way, I was not surprised that there was not much competition. What do I mean? Well I started with some popular rating sites. They all rate the service of the business and that is not really the purpose of my app. As I said before, if my app ever comes to fruition, I do not mean for it to be a ding necessarily on a business. It is purely for the customers to be informed. This informed me that there really is a need for an app like this. 
Time to create! 
I started with creating a wireframe and lofi prototype that users could try. 
Usability Study
I then created a script and conducted several usability studies. The overall opinion was great. One user even said, "This is a great idea that could help a lot of people." There were some minor navigation and customization comments. I prioritized insights to address these issues. One priority zero was, "based on the theme that users liked the personalized settings, an insight is more settings should be developed. A priority one insight was, "Based on the theme that users liked the personalized settings and voiced the link between settings and filtered search should be similar, an insight is similar personalized settings should be in filtered searches."
I used these insights to create my Hifi prototype. 

All in all, I loved doing this project and think I may take it further. After doing a final usability study, very positive comments were made. I am working on  copyrighting this idea. This went from being an assignment to something I really care about. 

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