Project Type

UX Case Study

Client

CareerFoundry

Timeline

Nov 2018 - April 2020

My Responsibilities

UX Design / UI Design
Jamal heard the familiar notification beep and jumped out of his seat as he saw the invitation to an interview at the company he’s been dreaming of for years.

The overwhelming rush of excitement, like being thrown with thousands of butterflies, suddenly turned into a cold shock as the only thing he could think of was: “What should I wear!?”...
Story of your life? It’s fine if not. As unique we all are, we all have times when we need some help. And that what this app is about.

This exploratory case study was a part of my training at CareerFoundry. The goal of this training program is to deliver an in-depth understanding and hands-on experience both in UX and UI design, and it does so by offering various study projects to students. In my case, it was to design a responsive web app for online expert services.

With great support and clever guidance from my mentors, Pia Klancar and Matt Kollat, I went through valleys and over hills of the User-Centered Design process and found my way here.

Problem Space

People NEED a simple and intuitive way to connect with experts in virtually any field to get help both with everyday challenges as well as bigger projects BECAUSE (a) they cannot find answers online and (b) there is no one in their close circles with relevant experience.

90%

of the study participants stated the Internet as their first place to go for answers
.. and the remaining 10% would try their luck with friends and family first

Abstract Solution

Design a USEFUL application that enables a simple, intuitive way to connect with online experts.
Start with UTILIY:
  • Identify user needs
  • Translate them into key features
  • Make features good at what they should do
Make it USABLE:
  • Organise content in an intuitive way
  • Create a logical & intuitive navigation
  • Carefully apply visuals, animations and transitions

The Competition

“Don’t reinvent the wheel, just realign it.”
Anthony J. D'Angelo

So to see how the wheel is doing, I took a closer look at existing solutions with a similar service portfolio. As of January 2019, three direct competitors have been identified, for two of which I was able to create a user account, with no response from the third one.
‍
While conducting the analysis, I examined the competitors' Overall Strategy and created their Marketing and SWOT Profiles. For the UX part of the analysis, I evaluated one of the competitors based on the Usability, Layout, Navigation, Compatibility and Calls to Action heuristic metrics.

Still untapped Market Potential

At the time the study was conducted, apart from several solutions with a very narrow focus, there were only a few alternatives that could be considered to be in direct competition. A fair conclusion we can draw here is that such applications are underrepresented and by addressing the shortcomings and issues identified during the analysis and also by introducing improvements as needed, the project may have a good chance of achieving a strong market position.

Big Room for Improvements

The reputation of both competitors is suffering from an alarming amount of negative feedback both in terms of the product and the service they provide. Although my primary focus was on the UX side of the competitors, some conceptual issues were prominent enough to be noticed already during the getting-to-know phase. Detailed UX analysis of JustAnswer conducted afterwards confirmed the first impression and revealed multiple major usability issues.

Heap of Best Practices

Indirect competitors like Angie’s List or analogous competitors like Quora and StackOverflow grew and made big names by steadily improving their services. Learning from their cases and amplifying their time-proven solutions can greatly benefit the project.

User Research

Having learned about what competitors are offering, I turned my attention to users. The ultimate goal here was to gauge the actual demand, see what users need and expect. Laying it over the available data from the competitive analysis would give me a better idea of possible gaps that cause barriers and frictions.
To achieve this, I broke the big goal down into the following smaller, more specific objectives, which I targeted using appropriate research methods:

  • get to know potential users: learn about their demographics, motivations and needs, concerns and frustrations, etc.
  • understand how different people approach problems: if and where they seek help, and what kind of help they need most
  • evaluate success potential: gauge users’ familiarity with the concept, examine their feature preferences and price expectations

FINDING 1:

Almost 85% of the research participants are familiar with the concept of the application. More than half of the them can imagine using such an app and even doing freelancing with it.

FINDING 2:

People generally tend to trust opinions from their close circles more than online reviews. Trust in the platform, its content and services will play a decisive role in the success of the application.

FINDING 3:

All of the participants use online search engines for finding answers to their questions, with 90% of them stating it as the first place to go.

FINDING 4:

Many participants mentioned local services and more than 50% of the survey participants chose in-person meeting as their preferred communication medium.

FINDING 5:

People want to be flexible in terms of their time, location, devices they use, and whom they contact.

TRY WELP LIVE HERE

What went well

Design:

Going from theory to implementation was a joy. Especially wiring screens together into a one,  interactive experience. I had lots of fun there!

Usability Testing:

To keep the test results as unbiased as possible, I decided to exclude my circles from the study and to guerilla recruit strangers. Being of a rather introverted nature, it was a BIG challenge for me to face. But it wasn’t bad at all to get rejections, and quite contrary to my fears, I didn’t even get laughed at: people either gave me a friendly smile or tried to ignore me completely.
I’ve learned the importance of making friends with the administration and the staff of the place of recruitment and giving them a heads up on what I was up to.

Peer Review:

The prototype has successfully passed usability tests without revealing any design disasters. It has also been very well received by my fellow students in peer reviews, during which I learned how to deal with critique and offer constructive feedback.

Presentation:

Having no access to dedicated video production and animation tools, I had to come up with many workarounds to create the demo video. It, however, turned out pretty neat. It makes me smile every time I watch it :)

What didn't go well

User Research:

Finding participants to represent different target groups was not an easy task.
Looking back at the interview results now, I also feel like I didn’t dig enough and got to the very core of the matter.

Usability Testing:

Recruiting participants took significantly more time than I expected. Making matters worse, four of the potential participants had to cancel their sessions.

On the technical side, there was an issue with images freezing on some of the video recordings, which left me with only audio to work with.
Also, going through the recordings I noticed several mistakes I’ve made as a moderator.

Design Documentation:

Working on the style guide, I had to discover lots of visual inconsistencies as a side-effect of several design iterations. This made the task quite overwhelming.

What could be improved

User Research:

Starting to recruit earlier and more proactively will help to get the required number and diversity of the study participants. I will also work on defining better questions.
To avoid the issue with freezing video image in future studies, I will select and compare available recording tools and pick the one that passes my tests.
To improve my moderation skills, I took an online course on usability testing and watched some tutorials.

Usability Testing:

In future projects, I will recruit more people than needed. If nobody cancels, I will have participants for post-optimisation tests ready.

Design Documentation:

To make this task more fun, I learned about the concept of reusable styles, components, and symbols on Figma and Sketch so that I can document the design as I go.

Credits

Images used in the app:

  • Linda: Andrea Piacanquadio @ Pexels

  • Jamal: Matthew Henry @ Burst Photos

  • Other profiles made using the UI Faces plugin for Adobe XD

  • Studying man on the landing page: Oladimeji Ajegbile @ Unsplash

  • Man with a camera on the landing page: Marvin Meyer @ Unsplash

The style guide is based on Semantic UI Kit by Ole Fredrik Lie
Background music for the demo video: Sneaky Snitch by Kevin MacLeod @ Filmmusic.io
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