Project 1: Reflection #3

 To make this week's discussion more productive, I suggested to my teammates to select one pain point and think of a solution. I thought this to be a good way because we are all users of the app, and as such would have somewhat different ways we think Google Docs could have improved on. 

For me, I began to be conscious of when and what I use Google Docs on my mobile. This week especially, I am finding myself using the app more lately (probably because assignments are due soon and I am always out and about). One such instance really brought to my attention the pain point I would like to focus my solution around:

When having a meeting, my teammate, who was using a laptop, decided to do notetaking in a table format. As I did not bring my laptop, I was only able to use my phone to contribute. I had a lot of trouble trying to record down information as I could not manipulate the table freely. As soon as my other teammate arrived, I, without a second thought, quickly asked to use Google Docs on their laptop.

Recalling this incident really made obvious to me the way I use Google Docs - mainly for word editing and nothing more complex than that. This resulted in two questions:

1. Why not?
2. How might I be motivated to use the app for complex tasks like table formatting?

Simple questions but oddly difficult to answer. I thought of the ways I had interacted with the app in an attempt to add more rows:

• looking for a clear button 
• tapping the row to bring up a menu to add rows
• dragging down the bottom left 

This made me wonder about how to make such affordances more convenient on the mobile so that I would be motivated to use the feature. The lecture this week really inspired me, especially about the ways we hold our phones. To me, adding the dragging feature seems to make the most out of the benefits of using the mobile. When on public transport, the thumb can easily reach the bottom of the table to drag it OR if in a meeting and using the phone, both hands are most likely to be free and the user can use their index to accurately drag down to add a row.

The problem with this is the specificity of the problem. Given that this is only one context of table formatting, I took it to my group to discuss how we can extend adding touch-friendly features to other contexts of using the app.