About Us
Merlin Software is always on the lookout for new ideas to incorporate into its products, so that we can continue to offer our users the best software platform for crisis management. That’s why we were immediately excited when we heard through the MKB Digiwerkplaats that The Hague University of Applied Sciences was looking for a client for a design project. This final first-year project for the Bachelor’s program in User Experience (UX) Design gave us the opportunity to formulate a design assignment that a total of 16 students could tackle individually.
Since the entire program is conducted in English, we have settled on the following assignment description: "For your design challenge, we want to focus on the use of our mobile application during the early stages of a crisis situation. These situations always occur unexpectedly and (ideally) infrequently. This means that the application needs to be very user-friendly and provide a user experience that is appropriate for a crisis situation where emotions run high. We are interested in exploring how our current application could be improved for use during a crisis situation and would like to challenge you to create interesting and inspiring design solutions."
Over a three-month period, the students went through the entire design process—from user analysis to insights and ideas—and ultimately presented a prototype. We had formulated the assignment in open-ended terms, allowing the students to choose different directions. It was therefore very nice to see that everyone had selected different parts of the app and proposed improvements for them. Through this blog, we would like to give you a glimpse into how the UX students would like to change our app to make it even more user-friendly.
For us, this project was a very educational and enjoyable experience. It gave us new insights that we’d like to build upon to ultimately take our app to the next level. This will certainly take some time, because, as with most projects, the design is just the beginning of the process. We can say with certainty, however, that these new insights will be valuable for us and our users.
So, a big thank you to all the students for your hard work! And thank you to The Hague University of Applied Sciences for the opportunity to participate in this fun and educational project. We’re definitely looking forward to more!
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