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Describe the Company
Gifter, an innovative mobile app improving gift shopping with a seamless blend of digital convenience and local charm. From birthdays to anniversaries, Gifter offers a curated selection for every occasion. The app's unique store locator effortlessly connects users with local Gifter stores, providing a personalized shopping experience. With real-time stock updates, users can explore and secure the perfect gift right from their fingertips. This fictional project showcases my expertise in crafting intuitive user interfaces and engaging design. Through Gifter, I demonstrate an understanding of the double diamond design process with a focus on accessibility and solving industry issues highlighted in my initial survey.
Capstone Project
2023
Problem
The current shopping experience in today’s market is heavily focused on getting users to sign up and pushing recommended products so they’re at the top of users' pages. My initial survey told me users don’t actually like recommended products being shown to them. Others who participated in my survey mentioned how being forced to sign in to use an app was a struggle they were consistently facing when using shopping with similar apps. There was even 1 person who mentioned how they mainly use apps like these to make decisions about whether to even go to a store at all. Gifter came from the idea to elevate the buying experience by taking a user centered approach to solve all the problems mentioned above, and cater to as many people as possible by constantly having accessibility at the forefront of my mind.
Goal
The goal was to create an elevated buying experience by refining and simplifying the process of exploring and purchasing products on mobile devices in creating this app. How I accomplish this stems from integrating insights gained from an initial survey, wherein users outlined their challenges and expectations from comparable applications.
My Role
In this project, I assumed the role of the sole product designer, responsible for overseeing the entire design process. My tasks encompassed the full spectrum, starting from discovery and user research and extending to the creation of a high-fidelity prototype on Figma. Throughout the project, I sought regular feedback from my mentor, Shelby, a Senior Product Designer at Turo. She provided valuable insights on various facets of my design process, including user journey maps, personas, information architecture, competitor analysis, Figma design work, and more. Her constructive feedback played a pivotal role in ensuring the proper execution of UX/UI design principles.
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See a more detailed view of some of my work
Stakeholders/Users
Everyone has birthdays and experiences life events, so target users for this project were anyone that has done online/mobile shopping in their past. Those were the individuals that I chose for surveys and user tests. My mentor Shelby provided feedback throughout the project, while the individual responsible for the final review of the project was a professor with over 20 years experience in the UX field
Goals and Motivations
Time is important to her
Fears and Frustrations
Having to scroll a lot to find what they're looking for
Tasks and Tactics
Tactics: searching by price to save money
Needs
Sign in option for preferences and things like credit card information to be saved.
User Research/Competitor Analysis
A survey was done at the very start of the project to find what was important to users and what frustrations they’ve faced in the past using similar apps. Frustrations were things like not having certain sorting options, having to re-enter information like their credit card information, and other things outside of our scope like bug issues and receiving emails after signing up. As for things that were important to users, two things stood out. One response talked about how it was important to them to be able to continue without signing in. Another talked about how they use mobile apps to check the stock of a particular product in their local store before deciding to go there. These responses would be used to create a customer journey map which would inspire me to create a guest path as well as a member path for users, and would help me decide which features would be used by guests.
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A competitor analysis was done with Target, Etsy, TJ Maxx, and Amazon. These apps range from 1 million to 500 million plus downloads, all of which have dedicated shopping applications. A common theme amongst these competitors is needing a lot of clicks to get to a desired page and some repetitive functions. Some other issues they face is Target uses a red text over a black background, which has a 4.1 contrast ratio making it hard to read. Etsy has a minimalist design which creates a learning curve for new users trying to figure out what all the categories mean, and where to find the information they’re looking for. Amazon and TJ Maxx have some repetitive processes and TJ Maxx also has some elements that feel out of place, like the back arrow above the logo. These were also good to see what trends and things they do well. All of them make a strong use of containers, they all have a similar bottom menu bar for navigation, etc.
Challenges and Constraints
The main challenges and constraints came from the fact that this isn't a real company so there were no real users to interview, no content or company name/logo to work with, and a deadline of 3 weeks to create a high-fidelity prototype. This was also my first design project, so it was my first time putting everything I was learning to practice.
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There were also specific pages to be designed and specific features to include in the app like giving users the ability to mange events in a calendar page. This led to certain UX decisions being taken out of my hands. For example, a landing page, a sign in page, and a sig up page. So I had to design 3 pages, instead of the 2 that it could be done in b combining the landing page and sign in page into one.
Process
My design process aims to be as user centric and informed as possible. Discovery and user research were the pillars that built the wireframe and prototype that went through a few iterations before submitting the final prototype linked above. As the sole designer, keeping a holistic approach and utilizing different things like surveys, user personas, user journey maps, competitive analysis', and user testing helped insure the visual identity, interaction patterns, and overall user experience for the app was on par with the goals we initially set out to achieve.
Outcomes
After creating the final prototype, I did one last round of user testing to ensure the goals I set out to achieve were accomplished. Small adjustments needed to be made, some microcopy on one page for example. After the test, users were asked to score the app out of 5 as a response. The following framework used to benchmark this test stems from the Google Heart framework, adjusted for this not being a real company/product.
Learnings
Being this was my final project for the bootcamp, and my first project putting together all the different aspects I learned in the course, the main thing that stood out to me in this process was just how much everything ties together. If I were to have skipped out on any 1 part, like the competitor analysis, I would have missed some of the interactive elements they use that I incorporated into my project. I could have potentially repeated UX mistakes they made as well. Every part of the discovery, defining, and exploring portions all play a role in the final delivery and this project really helped emphasize that fact for me.
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The course went over how to ask questions and gave us some tips for how to conduct user interviews, but actually doing them is the best way to learn of course. Conducting these surveys and user tests gave me a better appreciation for the nuance of extracting the most and best data out of people. It was a great learning experience finding the right people who won't have any biases, and wording things the right way to get the information I was looking for.
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If I were to do this project again, I would change my initial approach to designing the app. When I first started I really just wanted to get the pages I needed designed and make edits from there given the timeline, and this lead to not spending enough time on some key design decisions. If I were to start this project now, I'd have worked on some of the elements that I planned on using throughout the project. Choosing things like which color to use for primary buttons.