Project Party
Client: Project Party (Design Lab)
Industry: Event Design
My Role: UX/UI Designer & Researcher
Conceptual product design work for an event design and sourcing fictional company, Project Party. I created an app to meet the needs of an industry not often met, event design.
My Deliverables
I worked on the full UX/UI process from concepting the idea of the app to full branding and design to prototyping and user testing.
User research - Information Architecture - Wireframing - UI Design - User Testing
The Challenge
I created an ios app that focused on event design and sourcing for a fictional company, Project Party. The app needed to be a place where users can find and save inspiration, select any type of event decor to add to content boards, and have an augmented reality feature to pull in products and create layouts through their smartphone. The project called for full branding, including new logo, typography, and color palette as well as a mock-up of an ios app and prototype.
The Research
In order to learn more about the industry and the target demographic, including their wants, needs, and what pain-points they may have, I used two methods:
Competitor Analysis: a view at similar apps using augmented reality including both collective apps and apps developed for specific existing brands.
Main Strengths: Easy to Understand Introductions, Simple Navigations, Products Link Directly to Purchase Page, Favorite/Save Options, Social Feeds to Find/Share Inspiration
Main Weaknesses: Hard to Use AR Feature, Busy User Interface, Can Only Place 1 Item at a Time, Cannot Save a Design and Edit Later, Limited Product and Brand Selections
User Interviews and Surveys: using 1-1 interviews and online surveys to gain a better understanding of the target consumer and their needs for the app. The interviews consisted of 8 women 25-40 years old who all planned events within the last 3 months.
Main Needs/Wants: Social Feed, Multi-Retailer Shopping Feed, Event Boards to Upload Mood Boards and Add Products, AR with Tutorial, Multiple Products, and Share and Save Options
Main Pain-points: AR Only Allows 1 Item at a Time, Limited Amount of Products on Shopping Feed, Only 1 Brand’s Products Available, AR Feature Too Slow and Not Intuitive
As learned from the user research, the target demo’s main needs for an event design app with Augmented Reality feature were to be able to find and share inspiration, create event boards to upload mood boards and save source products in one place, a shopping feed that can be filtered by retailers, colors, and themes, and an augmented reality feature with a clear tutorial and the option to add multiple items and the option to save and edit later. The research date was then used to create a persona, empathy map, and story board to help further simplify the findings.
The UX
Once the persona was created, the structure of the app was created by mapping out the information architecture including the high-level product requirements of the main pages as well as the overall organization of information with a site map and user flows.
High Level Requirements 1 Introductory Pages to explain app 2 Login/Create Account Page with facebook option 3 Inspiration Feed with save, comment, and share buttons 4 Board Page with multiple active at a time 5 Individual Board Page with mood board, product feed, and saved mock-ups 6 Shopping Feed with filters by brand, price, and theme as well as save button 7 Create Page with options to use a template, personal photo, or AR 8 AR Page with board selection, tutorial, camera, product scroll, and save option 9 Profile Page with designs, notifications, collaborators, share option, and settings button
The process was then taken a step further through the creation of low-fidelity wireframes of the main pages of the flow to begin to sketch out the layouts before creating and adding in the branding and UI elements.
The Design
With the formatting in place, the next step was to create the branding and higher-fidelity wireframes. A style guide was created, inspired by the greenery trend in event decor and a play on lighting filters, including new logo mock-ups, color palette, and typography. Once completed, this branding was then translated to the UI Kit as well.
After the layouts from the low-fidelity wireframes and the branding and UI elements were put in to place, high-fidelity wireframes were created for all the interactions to be included in the prototype. This was done prior to the usability testing to be able to gain insight not just on the navigation of the app but on the overall aesthetic as well.
After the branding was put in place and the high-fidelity wireframes were created, a prototype was made showcasing the flows that covered the main needs of the user including a simple and easy to understand introduction, a login with the option to use facebook, an inspiration feed with a social aspect, event boards with the option to upload mood boards and add sourced products too, a shopping feed with search and filter options, an augmented reality feature with a clear tutorial and a save option, and an account dashboard with a share option.
The User Testing
Testing: With a prototype completed, usability testing was done 4 more women who had all planned events within the last 3 months. The feedback was mostly positive as the testing participants felt the navigation was easy to follow and really liked the branding of the app, especially that it allowed the content to shine. The main pain-points were on the visibility of the login button on the create account page, the tabs on the homepage needing more of a differentiation to know which one was active, the +add item button on the event board page needing an underline to show it was a link, the view board CTA after adding an item to a board needing to be reworded, and the arrow to pop-up the product scroll in the AR feature needing to be larger.
Next Steps: After feedback from the usability testing was compiled, an updated prototype was created with the suggested changes (Click Here) Any further steps would be to create a higher fidelity prototype with more interactions, conduct more testing and continue to update as needed.