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My Role
Timeline
Tools
Methods
(Team of 3)
7 Months
Figma
Competitive Analysis
Dec 2021 - Jun 2022
Figjam
User Persona
User Researcher
Wordpress
Customer Journey Mapping
Data Analyst
Monday.com
Problem Statement
Sketcher
Loom
Feature Prioritization
UI & Interaction Designer
User Flow
Usability Tester
Workshop Conductor
Tutorial Provider
Wireframes
Interactive Prototypes
Usability Testing
Monday Creator
Project Summary
The Live Design Project (TLDP) has a vision to revolutionise the interior design and renovation industry - by providing realistic and reasonable opportunities to passionate young designers/students. At the same time, providing low-cost interior design services to clients without compromising quality. Last but not least, allowing industry leaders in fulfilling their dedication in giving back to the community.
The Problem
This idea is new in the market and has little to no competitors to reference from for benchmarking. Hence, the difficulty is to make this revolution into a reality. Furthermore, the complexity amplified when there are multiple personae involved in a single workflow.
Design Process
The design thinking process is a model our team heavily relied on to have us aligned within the team as well as with the clients' expectations. Our objectives along the way will then be with minimal ambiguity.
Discover
Discover
What were our area of focus?
We held several meetings with the client in understanding the business' vision and our discussions helped us in getting closer in finding our direction towards that goal.
Recommendations:
A centralized platform for all parties to be on board, with full-fletched in-built communication capabilities and automated work flows.
What can we learn from the competitor brands?
We conducted both competitive and comparative analysis from direct competitors and also businesses (not from the same industry line) that uses similar concepts in their operations. We took this opportunity to identify the essence that we want to absorb from each of the different comparisons.
TLDP has a base idea of what we want to accomplish, but had no concept or whatsoever in how are we going to achieve it. Hence, this benchmark across these 8 businesses helped us developed our initial idea from learning their respective pros and cons.
These were the collective initial concepts that we went for according to the results of the competitive/comparative analysis:
Define
Define
Who are our users?
The 3 main personae created from the personae workshop we conducted with the TLDP stakeholders are the clients, design students and mentors. These will mainly be the target audience for the platform.
Diving deeper in understanding our users!
Using a Customer Journey Map (CJM) was deliberately used in predicting users' behaviour not only for cost-efficient reasons, but also to foster cross-team collaboration between the designers and the stakeholders, and also allowed us to rapidly understand the users' pain points better.
With the help of CJM, the problems uncovered became much more defined:
The first sitemap was crafted and proposed with the intention of solving all three persona's pain points and creating a centralized solution across all of them.
Develop
Develop
Rapid Wireframing it down on the art board!
Before we commit any long hours or effort on a high fidelity prototype, we first sketch out our ideas quickly in Figma, ignoring the aesthetics aspects of it. We want to get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) out as soon as possible to see if our ideas and analyzed research works out!
These are some low-fidelity wireframes we created for our first sprint to be tested. We created screens for the different user flows for the different persona. The way to sign up, to starting a project and seeing it through were carefully thought through but casually drawn out.
What the users say about our ideas?
We conducted the first round of usability tests with the low-fidelity wireframes we created for all 3 persona.
Usability Test participants:
We hear our users, we iterate our designs
After the first round of testing we started creating high-fidelity reusable components to be used in our subsequent mock up.
How did we allow users see the results of past projects?
Transparency is included in our project details, where clients can quickly toggle between different states on the landing page itself! The client can also see the process of how its done.
How did we handhold the users smoothly into the journey?
An onboarding is present when client attempts to sign up. All necessary information will be fed in bite-size to avoid being overbearing.
How did we encourage the clients to make payment without worries?
The one-off payment is without hidden costs, and its all spelled out on the payment page including the deliverables that the client will be receiving.
How did we manager users' expectations and bring to their attention the essentials?
Before and during every process, we provide visibility of system status. This way, they cannot ignore the noticeable.
How did we allow the personae to collaborate?
This centralized dashboard is the MVP. All 3 personae have their own dashboards, each with their own limitations to allow this collaboration be self-sustained.
How did we provide additional details of the project to the users?
In the same dashboard, there are value-added functions such as timeline and submission tabs to provide respective necessary information.
We design our own reusable components
We create variants of components within components, this allowed us to edit on the spot when we are in a discussion or demonstration with the stakeholders with just a few clicks. In addition, its neat how we can piece them together easily on a screen.
Deliver
Deliver
Uh-oh! Development takes more than half a year
It is not an uncommon problem that we face in the product development phase. Clients will always be eager in wanting to launch their product as soon as possible. However, it is inevitable that to develop a beautiful product, one must wait.
Well, our team recommended the TLDP team to utilize the functions and features in Monday.com to run their business in the meantime. Since, the business already have a soft launch prior to this iterative phase.
Business is running! Business is running! As quoted by the CEO of TLDP "So far I find it very convenient even if we are still trying it out.", it proved that its a small success that we managed to utilize this platform to keep the business running.
Glad this worked out as it is so out of the norm.
Results
Results
Did we accomplish TLDP's requirements?
Well, we all know that User Acceptance Testing could not replace Usability Testing so we conducted two rounds of usability tests, each tests gathered even more positive feedback than the previous. We then moved on to development with the changes.
Yes, we successfully created a product that fit TLDP's requirements - allowing their ideas to solve problems that actual users are facing in today's world. Not one, but three personae! Each can gain something out of TLDP to fulfil their needs.
Retrospective
Retrospective
Next steps
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Communication
This is something that is restrictive in Monday.com as TLDP is using it as a temporary measure to handle their everyday businesses. It is something we will incorporate into the future dashboard on the TLDP platform.
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Testing the actual platform
Ideally, TLDP should continue doing tests when the full platform is ready.
Reflections
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Many businesses nowadays just hop onto the idea that a website or an app is solution to most of their problems. This is incorrect.
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Do not work backwards, take a step back, understand the full picture and make sound decisions in moving forward.
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Using a third party platform made me learn that there is no single way to achieve a goal. As designers, we must be open to options and not be afraid to try them out.
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