GO-GREEN
I present my design process in the sections below, starting from defining and finding an expert app's need. The result is an app that helps beginners learn about planting and recipes through well-crafted articles and a chance to ask questions to an expert like a Gardner, landscaping designer, etc.
On a personal level, this project helped me understand how to use UX methodologies in actions and the challenges.
Solutions:
The pandemic is changing our routine and the way we ask for help from experts. Virtual meetings become mainstream, and the quest for new knowledge increases. As quarantine continues, people try to learn new skills, stay healthy, and support one another. The expert app will help meet these goals and support these challenging times.
Busy and motivated users need to make simple, easy-to-follow recipes because they want to stay healthy during COVID and reduce their carbon emissions. We will know this to be true when users successfully planted and made delicious recipes for sharing.
Challenges:
"As a user, I want to access a nutritionist via video or message to feel comfortable telling them about my problems."
Suspected User Story
Process
The steps might differ, but a good starting point for any project is to research. Interviews helped me understand the gap that the user is facing in the market. I would not have known that there is a shortage of Gardner's experts. My app could bridge a need for a gardener's expert with information on growing guides and plant-based recipes. To further understand the market place competitive analysis was conducted. Competitive analysis isn't about S.W.O.T analysis but also looking at its UI/UX elements such as navigation, compatibility accountability devices, etc. UX field is a unique field combining science (like hypothesis, testing, and empirical data) and art (design).
Interview Goals
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Understand user’s pain points and what motivates them to change lives.
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Understand the best way to organize information on the app so it’s less overwhelming for the readers.
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Understand the type of information and data points that are important and should be implanted in the app.
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Identify user’s interaction with an expert and what kind of experts, there are looking for regarding recipes.
All three participants were too excited about an app with all the information about growing their food and recipes. Participants were concerned about the cost, but they were willing to talk to a gardener expert rather than a nutritionist expert. Many fitness apps already have a personal trainer and a nutritionist. Gardening apps do not have an expert or recipes associated with plants. They would like to have an app that combines how-to’s, recipes, and talking to a gardener. To get to know the demographics and general sense of what people enjoy on the gardening app, I created a survey and ran it for a week.
“Omg! I want to know everything about reducing my carbon footprint. I would be more interested in talking to a gardener than a nutritionist. My dream is to own a house where I can grow my food.”
Hannah
Survey
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Chosen Platform: Google Form.
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Method: Promoted surveys on Instagram and Facebook groups for gardening and recipes. Shared surveys with family and friends who meet the user demographic.
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Time: ran the survey for a week
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"As a user, I want to access gardener expert via call, video or message to feel comfortable sharing them about my planting problems."
Proven User Story
💡 What did I learn?
Achieve
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My favorite part of this process was connecting with human beings!
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Letting the participants talk uncovers valuable information about the concepts of my idea.
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The interviews were conducted online, making it easier to schedule (during rona times)
Challenges
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Avoiding biased, leading, vague or close-ended questions.
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Remote user interviews create unique challenges. There were many challenges in this process. For instance, some of my participants did not want to interview face-to-face, to view expressions and reactions.
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I learned to pace better after each interview. It was easy to run out of time or go off-script. Learning to navigate my script but stay flexible was the key to completing a successful interview.
Synthesis
Affinity mapping is a great way to sort and catch missed points during the interviews. It's also a fun activity to bond with your teams and knows your target users. It's great to organize the information after user interviews. It helps me come up with a persona that represents our audience for the product/service. A mental model is a great way to look into the depth of users' minds and emotions as they interact with the app through a scenario. It's an important step to create user flows and prototypes that make sense to the user's mental models.
User Journey
Before getting started with designing for Sam and Allison, I needed to craft a visual representation of how they would feel while using Gogreen app. This allowed me to identify the low and high points, in order to craft a compelling narrative in my design decisions.
Sam, novice gardner. through "GoGreen"
Allison, expert gardner through GoGreen.
💡 What did I learn?
Achieve
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Design decisions are easier once the target group is narrowed.
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Creating personas shows you if you understand your user's pains, needs, and motivations. Task flow for booking an expert on gogreen expert.
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User personas give a sense of the clear picture of the user's expectations and uncover universal functions and features.
Challenges
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Confusing user flow with task flow is possible but remembering task flow should be simple and can be thought from a user's perspective. User flows are complex and show entry/start and end/endpoints.
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Focus on the core features rather than the nice features to have on the side will make the process simple.
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Focus on the user's POV rather than your own point of view when making design decisions.
IDEATION
Sitemap
We used the card sorting method to determine the site map's validation from the user's perspective. Six participants were recruited using optimal workshop tools with hybrid card sort and twenty cards. Out of the three clusters, the green group has the highest agreement level of category. The 3D view gives me a good idea of how terms are connected and the list of linked cards. I decided for users to have easy access to the pages. I need to change the hierarchy of my app/website. I should have co-existing hierarchies to connect the parent and child page. Some users were having difficulty with cards as it seems most cards could be in more than one category.
Before
Before
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Prototype
Ideating prototypes from low to mid helped me understand what features are important and feasible. If I were in a team, I would have open communication and collaboration with developers, managers, and any relevant team members. Invite them to check out the prototype and gather their feedback to see if I miss any business requirements or breached any constraints. This is an excellent chance to know which features are feasible for developers to work on. I can go back and ideate before it's ready for the user's perspective.
*Business goals, constraints, and requirements are as important as the user perspective. Should be given equal weight to both.
💡 What did I learn?
Achieve
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Less is more when it comes to the reduction of pages and to speed up the process.
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Learning the difference between native vs. website app.
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Mobile-First design is the best approach for this case.
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Functionality vs. Uniqueness. Understanding and choosing which features should be tested.
Challenges
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The balance between a number of pages vs. a number of features.
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Which/how many features can be combined on a page?
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Keeping the app unique, at the same time simple and intuitive.
TESTING
Usability Testing
3 core features were identified:
Homepage
Expert features
Search page for recipes and plants.
Preparation:
There was a total of 6 participants. Three of them were in-person and the other three were remote. All the participants were related to the personas except one who participated in the control testing session. Their responses were then processes using affinity mapping and a rainbow spreadsheet. It contributed to summing the qualitative results and insights into the severity of the errors.
Methodology:
Moderated in-Person, and moderated remote testing methods will be used.
Moderated in-person will be limited to the family due to COVID safety and regulations in place.
Test Objective:
− Is the onboarding easy to understand with clear and concise instructions?
− Assess certain intuitive features for users to interact with, such as booking an expert or searching & filtering for plants/recipes blogs.
− Assess user’s emotions with the app’s layout and features within the mobile application.
💡 What did I learn?
Achieve
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By making a layout with your plan and script, you are relaxed and tests can go faster.
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Reviewing and sorting your results helps you detect patterns that you might have missed.
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Usability Tests are great for identifying any bottlenecks in the process.
Challenges
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Finding participants takes a lot of time.
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Language can be a barrier if you working with international crowds.
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Upgrades take a lot of time.
UI Element
Much of the feedback that we have gotten was about the visual element of the app. Our iteration's next focus was on how we present our content and look appealing to the users. Design principle or Gestalt law and HIG guidelines were followed for MVP to look professional and clean.
Color
The color palette compromise of lighter shade of blue, and white for background. The navy blue evoke feelings of calm and relaxation, which are essential in the lifestyle of professionals who nowadays live and work in the same space, while the dark blue tones emphasizes the professional, trustworthy image that a real estate app should provide
Typograpphy
💡 What did I learn?
Achieve
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A deeper understanding of psychology principles of design.
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Learned to make decisions beyond usability testing.
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GoGreen represent organic and sustainability which is represented by the color green
Challenges
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A style guide takes a lot of time and it's an ongoing project.
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Coming up with a combination in terms of color and typography.
REFLECTION
As a possible future action, we suggest future development based on another round of testing. Invite developers and have an open communication/collaboration for the next steps. If approved, we would work and support the team to ensure the product comes to life. We would keep in mind the accessibility principles and being transparent about our process to ensure we do not violate our user's privacy.
🎉 This was a great experience for me as it gave me the foundation and the meaning for UX role within an agile process.
🎉 Due to my analyst role previously, I had an idea of UX Design but with this course, I have managed to get a better understanding of the process and the methodology used.
🎉 The research, site-maps and personas are one of my favorite parts but also the part that defines the whole design process.
🎉 Rapid testing is a must but so is testing the process.
🎉 Criticism is a great way to improve and learn.
