Understand

Context

Since people spend more time at home, the cycle they refresh their place has become more frequent. By doing so people get to come up with more questions related to home interior than before and they solve them by asking their family members and friends or searching for online.

Objective

This project is initiated to give those people a simple, intuitive way to connect with an interior expert so that they can be better informed.

Target Audience

The age demographic for this app is 18-40. People between 18 to 40 are more likely to use this service as these age demographics tend to actively explore their life by moving to new cities for new jobs, moving with their partners and moving to bigger places with kids.

Competitive Analysis

I conducted a competitive analysis including competitor profile, UX analysis and SWOT profile to help me to get an idea of what users might expect from my design, identify opportunities, spot weaknesses and most importantly use them to my advantage to outperform them.

I particularly paid attention to my competitor’s weakness and threats as that is where I will be able to take the most advantage of them with my own product.

Competitor : " Havenly "
‍Online Interior design service from decor advice or furniture recommendations to whole room designs
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Observe

User Research

Now it is time to understand users. I conducted user interview with 5 of my potential users and I got to obtain a vast volume of data.

‍Interview Goals
‍1. Uncovering users’ pain points when using other home interior experts apps and getting home interior advice
2. Identifying users’ struggles when it comes to home interior and the scale of change users are willing to make by themselves
3. To determine the context when users would want to use a home interior expert app

‍Participants

Interview key learning
‍1. Most of the interviewees relate furniture and decoration first to interior design
2. People struggle with home interior but don’t look for expert apps instead search online
3. They think their issue is too small to ask experts and they try to figure out themselves
4. Since Corona outbreak, people get to have more interest in making their home more comfortable, appealing and fun
5. The apps people mentioned are all furniture shopping apps focusing more on selling
6. People in my target group know what they like in terms of home styling

‍User Interview results : Affinity Mapping
‍I organized and explored the data for findings and then using affinity mapping tool I identified the relationship between individual components by grouping them in various ways. The cluster of data from affinity mapping became the basis of exposing insights.

Problem Statement

‍1. Interior tips online tend to be too generic to apply
2. Interior advice apps are oriented to encourage users to purchase their furniture
3. No place to ask for simple interior advice

Problem Statement
“ Users need a way to get simple interior tips from interior experts because simple interior tips are not appropriate to ask professional interior firms and the information online tends to be too generic, vague or doesn’t fit to one’s place. I will know this to be true when I see users can easily be connected with experts and apply the interior advice they get to their home with satisfaction. ”

Hypothesis statement

These three hypotheses are created as opportunities to explore ideas and potential solutions of the primary problem of my personas.

‍" I believe that by proving an app that allows users find experts and be connected easily with experts and ask for simple tips for home interior for Lisa, I will achieve that Lisa can solve her interior issue fast and conveniently "

" I believe that by creating an app proving a feature of community where users can communicate with each other over interior design for Olivia, I will achieve that Olivia enjoys home interior process more "

" I believe that by creating an app providing a Style Quiz in order for users to get to know their style and communicate easier with expert for Lisa, I will achieve that the experts could provide users more accurate and tailored advice "

Ideate

User journey map

I visualised processes a user goes through in order to accomplish a goal using user journey map. I wrote two scenarios in relation to the hypotheses I formulated earlier. In this journey map, I paid extra attention to visualize the process in a narrative way and to capture opportunities as they will play an important role to move forward.

The key opportunities :
- Creating 'Asking an expert' feature by allowing users ask questions over chat
- Adding a button to see current available experts
- Ability to save messages and pictures on a chat
- Creating 'Q&A' feature to allow users ask questions each other.
- Creating 'Poll' feature to ask for opinion

Card Sorting

With the list of content for my application I conducted card sorting test. The aim for this test was to find patterns giving clue about what way to organise my website or application makes sense the most to many people. With the test results, I would be able to see what is the most logical way to organise content and improve my sitemap.

Participants Overview
‍In total, 8 people participated in my card sorting test. It took them a median time of 6 minutes to complete the study and they created a median of 5 categories each.

‍Conclusion
‍People can be confused by the terms which sound generic such as Q&A and Children. Majority of the participants couldn’t connect the label “Children” with “Rooms” since the term of children has its own meaning and Q&A is also understood as a place to ask general questions rather than a place for asking particularly interior related questions.
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Site Map

Based on the card sorting results I recreated a sitemap by tweaking hierarchy and some of titles.

Prototype

Now finally it is the time to start to create prototypes. I began this phase with creating low fidelity prototype and I continuously modified and increased the level of fidelity based one feedback, research, and design iteration.

Low-Fidelity to High-Fidelity Prototype
‍As for low-fidelity prototype, I highlighted only the high-level functionality of a design without details of design, color, and imagery as it is the stage before sharing the basic functionality with stakeholders.
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Moving forward, I started fleshing out every single detail of a design to make it look and feel like a live system in terms of graphics, spacing, and layout. Additionally, I advanced it to a clickable prototype to make it function as a MVP and it was used when conducting usability test which is following next.

Test

Usability Test

Usability Test Plan
‍Before beginning usability test, I created a usability test plan to define, clarify and communicate the goals and test objectives.

Usability Test script
‍I outlined what I plan to say and communicate to my test participant. it help me to provide structure to the conversations and keep tests consistent. Users were asked some of open-end questions around the usability of my application and to perform Scenario tasks using my interactive prototype.
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Scenario Tasks
1. There is an empty wall behind your sofa in your living room and you want to put something which fits well in your living room. However, you are not quite sure what to put there. Using this app, find an expert who fits for your needs and ask for help.
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‍2. You want to buy a set of chairs for your dinning room and you found two different sets you like. You want to hear different opinions from others users to help yourself make a decision. Using this app ask people which chairs fit better.

‍Participants

Usability Test Result

Affinity Mapping
‍From usability testings, I garnered a lot of qualitative data. I used affinity mapping tool in order to isolate and group the information and tease out patterns of behaviour and sentiment across participants.

Rainbow speadsheet
‍After affinity mapping, using rainbow speadsheet, I organized my observations sorted into categories in a way that will be useful to understand and help me make decisions about next steps.

I assigned each participant a color and customized the number of participants such as P1, P2, and so on. I entered and organize my affinity map observations into usability test results tabs. The number in ‘total’ column reveals frequency and this helped me prioritize what to fix. At last, I wrote down some fixes for my future iterations.

Conclusion from Usability Test
‍Most of participants made similar errors and had similar struggles. They were insecure about using video call feature and wanted to see more of expert’s portfolio and reviews from users to help themselves determine an expert to be connected. They enjoyed more on the feature “Q&A” although they made a few errors. Participants found this app easy to learn, quite intuitive and well structured.

User Testing Report

The rainbow spreadsheet helped me determine which action items should be the highest priority. The most critical action items are subjected to be improved when I created a test report.

Final Iteration

Style Guide

I created a style guide for my product to help safeguard the integrity of a design.

Final Product

Now I have gone through all the design processes and my design is ready to be shown out there. The next step for my application would be continuous improvement over time by making it more useful and usable for users.

Reflection

Challenge

My first challenge was building user flows. I struggled to create user flows. I didn’t have enough understanding of how the flows should be structured. At first, I thrived alone by looking for many other user flows and making several versions by not knowing what is a right way. As it didn’t really help me to learn it, I reached out my tutor to get advice on it and it helped me a lot by letting me know what exactly were issues. I realized that sometimes getting help and advice early on confuse me less and save time in terms of struggles from usage of UX tools.
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My second challenge was to focus on the feature which are necessary. After user testing I removed two features, 'Explore’ and ‘Share your stories’ and made the other two main features more specific and matured. By wanting to add all the features users want to have I squeezed them in the mobile app, but as the project started being matured, I realized my app had been less focused on the main features. There was no room to make the main feature more detailed and usable. So, I made decision to remove two features and make the app works as an expert app well.

What went well

Affinity mapping
‍Affinity mapping was my favorite part in this project. The activity to identify the relationship between individual components by grouping them in various ways allowed me discover insights which I wasn’t able to see before. With the insights I even could go one step further coming up with conclusions. As I was fully immersed into Affinity mapping tool, I could come up with useful insights and conclusions.
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User journey mapping
‍User Journey map was my another favorite part in the project. The process to build up user journey map such as visualizing the process in a narrative way gave me the chance to come up with opportunities, which are highly related to my personas. The opportunities helped to create features which will help users accomplish their goals.

What I would do differently

Through user journey mapping I come up with an opportunity which helps users plan when changing their place by themselves by providing a plan chart. If I could do differently,
I would develop to create a planner app specialized in self home interior.

Main Lesson

This project has taught me when to and how to use research tools such as User Interview, Userbility Testing, Card Sorting, User journey mapping, User flow, Affinity Mapping and Rainbow Spreadsheet. Those tools are extremely useful and necessary to be able to use to create useful and usable products.

It has also brought me an insight that since Corona pandemic, the meaning of home has been evolved. Home has become the only place they feel safe in and the place multiple activities including what they hadn’t usually done at home are happening. This situation has changed their perception on home making them to improve their home more appealing, convenient and multifunctional.
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Lastly, I also learned that there is no way to make my application optimal at one swoop. User testing and iteration is the only way to get closer to users and it is needed to challenge the existing solution to improve the usability and utility.

Understand

Observe

Ideate

Test

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