Day 4 – Today we had the privilege of testing an up and coming SAS app called GatherIQ which aims to bring hard to find data to the masses. It often targets hot button topics such as clean water access, immigration paths, and sepsis. I had the privilege of partnering with Kevin Chen, and together we explored the app, testing its usability. While we felt the data was very cool, some of it was very hard to interpret and counterintuitive; not good for an app meant for the general populace. Kevin gave some very honest feedback.
We did see a lot of potential for the app within a school setting, allowing students to examine problems that wouldn’t normally be possible.
At the end of the day, Kevin, Nancy (a person from another school), and I designed and proposed ways to make GatherIQ even more revolutionary. Nancy sketched an interface that resembled Instagram with a top stories page, a search function, and a personal profile page. Kevin thought of an ingenious rewards system that encourages progression and engagement within the app; calling for users to share and create their own graphs to unlock cooler designs and more advanced graphing options. We also brainstormed an idea (which Kevin and Nancy both shot down) to make the experience more customizable. Instead of users just copying and pasting graphs, they would take the vast amounts of variables that SAS has already isolated, and use the database to compare and contrast two variables of their choosing. This would allow people to discover relationships between the relevant variables and GatherIQ would provide the platform to share these discoveries. Then we presented; this is when Kevin really shined.
Have a good weekend.