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Project Goals

Design a dynamic, community-driven platform that equips the design community with a comprehensive suite of accessible resources, empowering them to excel in every phase of the UX design journey.
It serves as a centralized repository, fostering collaboration and resource sharing among designers.

Thesis project
UX research
UX design
View prototype

Project Details

Solo design project

User Research: Desk research, Competitor analysis, User Interviews, Surveys, Persona mapping, Journey Mapping
Design: Sketches, Wireframing, Design system, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Duration: 2.5 Months
Project type: Final thesis project

Tools: Figma, Figjam, Miro and Maze.

Technology now has the single largest impact on an organization’s ability to react, innovate and succeed. Today’s industry leaders have embraced this and literally changed. Of course, everyone uses technology to change in different ways, but we believe customers can take.

Rapid growth in digital and mobile technology is changing the advertising industry, and the UK is leading the charge, with digital set to claim more than half of all advertising spend in 2016, according to a recent report from marketing.

Problem

The process of understanding and implementing comprehensive UX processes is often overwhelming for novice designers.
Uneven resource distribution: While references for user interface (UI) design are abundant, there is a lack of proper guidance on critical UX methodologies with real-world applications.
Guidance on critical UX methodologies with real-world applications is scarce, creating knowledge gaps and hindering the development of well-rounded, user-centric designs.

Roadmap to the design process

Leveraged insights from analytics during research and design phase to drive design decisions.

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Discovery

- Desk research
- Discovery interviews
- Competitor analysis.

Go to discovery
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Definition

- Survey
- In-depth interviews
- User personas

Go to definition
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Ideation

- User stories
- User journey

Go to ideation
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Design

- Low fidelity wireframes
- High-fidelity prototypes
- Usability testing  

Go to design
Discovery

Understanding UXer's pain points across the design process

During product workshop, I analyzed the transaction creation funnel and came up with three concrete use cases that we could explore: limits on calculator i.e payment or delivery method error, country based limits and tier based limits on individual.
Breaking down and exploring individual use cases, enabled easier execution, evaluation, and refinement.

Omniversity platform
This graph represents the user drop-off at various stages in the money transfer funnel.
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32.7% drop-off observed for active users between creating a transaction and it being processed within the app.

Analysis: Aimed to pinpoint drop-off points in the payment flow and assess completed transaction rates.

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Useflow Map Image
Discovery

Understanding UXer's pain points across the design process

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Desk Research

Explored existing resources for UX/UI processes and methodologies across various mediums and separated them based on the design stage.

Discovery interviews

Conducted 4 in-depth interviews with mainstream and extreme users like Graduate students and UX professionals to discover the target audience and understand their needs and pain points when working on a UX project.  

View insights
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Competitor analysis

Researched on existing solutions and outlined what works, and opportunities for improvement across aggregators of UX resources.

View insights

Workflow

I introduced a feature that automated data inception, analytics, and report generation pipeline for repetitive company processes. It was based on user insights and became the most used feature, leading to creating of a self-serve feature on the platform that the companies could themselves use to create their own workflows.

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Standardizing the platform

Main themes discovered

The aim was to design a reusable and user-friendly component library, comprising of essential UI elements. Here is what I did:

  • People follow large companies for design guidelines and inspiration as they believe the companies follow best practices, and have design pages with insights.
  • People use wide range of resources; YouTube tutorials, podcasts, blogs, case studies, books, newsletters, etc to learn new methods and skills to get a holistic understanding.
  • Novice designers need more help finding resources relevant to the research stage as compared to the design stage.
  • Knowledge sharing is practiced amongst junior and senior designers in the professional world.
  • People like to build their own tool kit of references.
Definition

Surveys

Based on the themes identified in the discovery interviews and opportunities discovered in the competitive analysis, I created a survey to get quantitative validation and broader insights to complement qualitative findings.
Tools: Qualtrcis and Figjam

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Survey questions

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Survey insights

Link to insights
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Career

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Blog

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Integration

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Contact Us

In-depth interviews

Conducted 3 interviews with UX professionals with less than two years of experience to dig deeper to understand the motivations, pain points of the target audience discovered during surveys.

  • As the platform was content heavy, a light theme improved the readability of text and other content on the platform, making it easier for users to view and understand the information presented.
  • A light theme design reduced eye strain and fatigue, making it more comfortable for users to use the platform for extended periods of time.
  • For users with visual impairments, a light theme with high contrast made the platform easier to navigate and use, improving accessibility.
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Home

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Plan & Pricing

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Career

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Blog

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Integration

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Contact Us

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Themes identified

Main struggles for novice UX designers
  • 90% struggled more with the research stage than the design stage. Most start research on Google but have go-to resources for the design stage.
  • Finding relevant examples, especially in niche industries is significantly challenging.
  • Justifying design decisions and presenting design insights is a struggle.
Self improvement
  • Users engage in self-directed projects, follow influential designers, read articles to keep learning and growing.
  • UXers like to create content and mentor others to improve their personal brand.
Resource utilization
  • UXers like to filter resources based on ease of access, budget constraints, and creator reliability.
  • UXers create personal toolkits but struggle with disorganization.
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User Personas

Combining the insights from both the in-depth interviews, I discovered that my primary target audience is UXers with less than 2 years of experience looking to improve their skills and get more relevant world experience.

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Persona 1: New grad with internship experience aspiring to be a UX generalist.

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Persona 2: UX designer in a mid-sized tech company.

Ideation

User stories

Created four user stories for members and one for content creators to define the primary goals of using the platform. Referencing the personas and themes identified through research to created stories that speak to their needs, goals and frustrations.

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Useflow Map Image

User journey mapping using the Kano Model

Used Kano model as an extension of user journey mapping to objectively outline requirements and to stay aligned with customer needs when deciding which features to include and prioritize.

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Establishing design outcomes

A community-driven platform  that empowers UX professionals through insights into the tools, and methods, making learning easy.
User Research

Centralization: Provide a single, comprehensive platform where designers can easily find diverse resources essential to the UX design process, eliminating the struggle of searching across multiple sources

Empowerment: Equip designers with insights into the best tools and software available for different phases of the UX process, enabling them to make informed decisions.

Collaboration: Foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing among designers worldwide, promoting a sense of community and collective growth.

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Design

Low fidelity wireframes

The journey to creating low-fidelity wireframes involved exploratory sketching to rapidly iterate and validate ideas before advancing to more detailed wireframes.

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Establishing design outcomes

A community-driven platform  that empowers UX professionals through insights into the tools, and methods, making learning easy.
User Research

Centralization: Provide a single, comprehensive platform where designers can easily find diverse resources essential to the UX design process, eliminating the struggle of searching across multiple sources

Empowerment: Equip designers with insights into the best tools and software available for different phases of the UX process, enabling them to make informed decisions.

Collaboration: Foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing among designers worldwide, promoting a sense of community and collective growth.

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Hi-fidelity wireframes

How might we equip UX professionals with the necessary tools and insights to implement UX methodologies confidently?

A community-driven platform  that empowers UX professionals through insights into the tools, and methods, making learning easy.
This platform helps users by focusing on searchability,  scannability, and learnability of the content.

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Onboarding journey

Incorporating user preferences and goals to share content that aligns with user needs. It allows users to select their disciplines, industries of interest, professional goals and frequency of content recommendations.

Discovery process

  • User can search for resources based on topics, rating, cost, and template type.
  • They can further filter resources based on design stage, area of expertise, and industry.
  • They can view all the filtered parameters and preview resource to gauge it’s relevance.
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Learnability and Resource Utilization

Structured format that distinguishes various methodologies within each design stage, ensuring clarity and ease of navigation

  • Insights : Information on purpose, workings, and outcomes for each methodology.
  • Ease of access: Direct access to templates for practical design application.
  • Organization: Help users organize resources by recommending apt folder and insights about unused resources.
  • Support: Quick clarification on any doubts or questions within the project.

How might we help novice UXers grow?

  • Keeping them motivated through gamification by celebrating achievements which align with their disciplines of interest.
  • Recommending resources and UX experts they can follow based on their areas of interest.
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How might we help content creators? ✍🏼

By making content creation simple, helping them get visibility & community building.

While creating an account they add their personal and professional details. Encourage content creators to follow community guidelines to avoid bad actors.

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Ensuring the process of creating a project is easy and allows customization. The process involves adding basic details then organizing the methodologies within design stage. The creator have tips and can use AI for help if needed.

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This view celebrates achievements of creators by sharing valuable insights into their impact. Creators can track their project's reach, engagement metrics, and revenue generated, fuelling their drive to create useful projects.

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Usability Testing

Conducted a formative usability test with 3 participants using Maze to evaluate the following:
1. Evaluate the preliminary design concepts and information architecture.
2. Identify usability issues early in the design process.
3. Gather feedback to inform design iterations.

Task 1: Explore the home page and Sign-up
Task 2: Create and account and set preferences
Task 3: Open a case study and go to last method.
Task 4: Find the learning tab and explore the page.
Task 5: Go to collections and then open a collection.

Findings of the usability test

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Issue: Unclear messaging and content on the home page.

Solution: Updated the home page design to provide a more comprehensive and clear view of the platform's purpose, offerings, and value proposition. Ensure the content and messaging effectively communicate what users can expect from the platform

Issue: Users could navigate to relevant sections but faced challenges in completing tasks directly.

Solution: Analyzed the specific areas where users encountered difficulties through heat maps and mis-clicks and identified confusing elements and addressed them through design improvements and better guidance.

Issue: Users wanted to explore content creators and experts before accessing resources.

Solution: Introduce a dedicated section in the "learnings" tab that showcases UX experts and content creators related to user's various areas of interest . This section would allow users to follow and explore the experts' profiles, and resources before diving into the learning materials.

Final outcome

Updated the final designs based on feedback from the usability tests