UX/UI challenge : adding a crazy new feature on a mobile app
As a second project of my Ironhack training, I had to put myself into a recruitment process as a UX/UI designer, and the great part, choosing a company which I would love to work for.
I choose to work on Back Market mobile application. Then, instructor’s team gave me this brief : add a new a feature on this app that enable people to book disconnection holidays.
DISCOVERY PHASE
Secondary Research : business competitive analysis
Benchmarking is the very first step in the design process discovery phase. Understanding the business needs enable you to create solutions that will deliver value to stakeholders and trigger the development or improvement of concrete products and services. I went for Market Positioning Map.
I choose to go for way of living and type of consumption for my axis. I had the direct competitors of Back Market and the indirect ones (Fnac, Amazon, Boulanger). I also add the new ones I will have with my feature, like Chilowé (a website of micro adventure), or Camp Grounded to experience digital detox.
We can see that Back Market would be on a totally new market, between slow living and responsible consumption. Quite promising isn’t it?
Primary Research : user’s interviews
I conducted interviews on five users of Back Market mobile app to better understand how they use the app, why and what they think about the new feature. People are willing to use Back Market app/ mobile website once or twice per year to buy a reconditioned product. They do it for the price first and the ecologic side then. Last, they use Back Market because of his reputation, instead of going for their competitors.
From this, I kept a lot of insights and powerful quote that will enable me to work on the ideation part.
The main frustrations that came up to me were :
- People seemed not very confident to book holidays on a e-commerce website.
- The duration of the holidays have to be short, they don’t want too long ones far away from their screens
- The high level of price of this type of holidays is a pain point
IDEATION PHASE
I used a series of tools and exercises that helped me generate ideas on how to design a product that will help users accomplish their goals. I worked with two others UX designer to helped me finding ideas and in return, helped them with their project. I did 3 ideation exercices :
- Worst ideas into good ideas : use bad ideas to come up with fresh, good ideas. Many bad ideas can also contain the “seeds” of good ones. Consider each bad idea with the thought that at least some aspect of it has value, and make it your goal to find it!
- Crazy 8’s : come up with 8 different ideas in 8 minutes. This exercice is designed to force us generating lots of ideas in a short period of time before delving into the details. The activity can then be repeated to hone & flesh out a few of the best ideas.
- Prioritization : at the end, you have 8 x 3 = 24 ideas from your team and yourself. You have to make a choice on one of them to start the user flow and the mid-fidelity wireframe. First, I erased the ones I would not take considering the initial brief and the potential business goals. Then, I choose the one that I had several ideas on the prototype and inspiration from other mobile apps. I came with this idea :
=> CREATE A FEATURE THAT WOULD OFFER A CUSTOMIZED PATH TO CREATE YOUR OWN DISCONNECTION HOLIDAYS
ITERATION PHASE
Mid-fidelity wireframe
As the next exercice to create my feature, I created the mid-fidelity wireframes of my prototype. Wireframing is an essential step in any design process. It allows you to define the information hierarchy of your design, making it easier for you to plan the layout according to how you want your user to process the information.
Usability test
In order to have feedbacks on my mid-fi prototype, I conducted usability tests with 5 users that know Back Market et use the application. It is important to test prototype before writing any code. Indeed, when the application goes live, users will test our product and consequentially our prototype. The problem is that fixing a mistake once the product is live is way more expensive, time-consuming and difficult than to fix it in the early stages of designing.
How I did this ?
Scenario
I worked on a script that guided my users during the test. It follow the user flow I defined and it helped me to give context to my users and get to know if my participants are able to perform the tasks and like the solution.
Round 1 : tasks
#Task 1 : get to know more about this offer by clicking on “Je découvre”
#Task 2 : choose the nature scenario. You want to go with friends or family in a rustic place. Then, you will choose to visit Auvergne during Autumn, for 4 days. You will scroll down.
#Task 3 : you will decide to bookmark the destination and to check the trip you put in the bookmark section. From here, you will take a look of the page destination.
#Task 4 : you will decide to come back to the beginning with the footer.
Same with the cooking scenario with different parameters
Round 2 : ask several questions about their experience with my prototype, such as :
What did you think of that ? Is that what you expected ? Why ? What comes to mind when you were looking for ? What missing information could have helped you ?
Round 3 : debriefing
The idea her is to get to know more the general feedbacks they had, their last feelings about the feature. Unfortunately, they all still thought that feature was incoherent with Back Market application…
Finally, every time we create a prototype, we should test it, gather feedback and iterate on it until we have the final design. Multiple rounds of testing while moving from low fidelity to high fidelity can ensure a better final product.
Feedbacks
Here the feedbacks I got from my users :
From this, I could work on my high-fidelity prototype include visual elements: pictures, icons, colors, and typography, interactions and navigation.
I let you discover my high-fidelity proto 🤩
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
KEY LEARNINGS
- For Back Market : there is an intensive work to do in marketing to convince their users about their credibility on this market
- For me : the usability test with the scenario was a very interesting part, above all with older adults that really need it.
- Next steps : I would love work on the development of the booking screens.
Thank you for reading !
