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January 18, 2016 - No Comments!

Serendi

WHY SERENDI?

Ser·en·dip·i·ty

The act of finding something valuable or delightful when you are not looking for it.

Project Description

This app hopes to encourage people to send and receive meaningful surprises when they are traveling.

 

The BackStory

This was for a class project examining the thorough process of user-centered design. To begin, We brainstormed for the topics we were going to explore ranging from smart home, shopping, transportation and travel. But it was travel that caught everyone's attention because we all have keen interest in traveling. Initially, we focused on documenting the sighting and also other interesting experiences during traveling. We thought that there was a break between traveling and its documentations. Therefore, we really wanted to work with the idea of travel journaling and sharing of travel experiences.

 

Serendipitous Message

However, our direction has shifted after more market research, we have found a lot very established mobile applications that serves the purpose of documenting travel as well as giving suggestions based on people's experiences. Therefore, a meeting was called and we wanted to shift the direction of design. After more brainstorming and personal storytelling, a "wow" moment was realized. Even though there are a lot of journaling apps, there's a break between travel experience sharing and connections between friends. Usually when people want to learn about other people's travel experiences and tips would be before they travel.But when people are at the place of interested, they are most awed by what they see and more willing to share. Therefore, the current social sharing mode does not address this break in connection.

 

WHO ARE THE USERS?

To address the problem, 3 research methods were carried out. 72 surveys, 11 interviews and 100 of articles. Going through more materials, we could finally make sense of our materials and come to conclusions about personas.

 

SCENARIO DESIGN

After initial visualization of the personas, and consolidating with our secondary research, we realize that the actual travel sharing has a disconnection with when people want to receive details about their future travel. Therefore, we are exploring the moment when people are at the places of interests and could not wait to share about their travel adventures. Also, when they are at the space, it would be really interesting to learn about what their friends or closed ones learn and explore at this space before.

Scenario Sketches

 

WIREFRAME PROTOTYPE

Based on user research, comparative analysis and scenario design sketches, wireframes are produced to create interactive prototypes to test our research findings and if the designs are according to customer needs.

 

USABILITY TESTING

Based on the wireframe prototype done, we conducted usability testing with 4 people. We had 100% completion rate and identified 13 UI design problems.

 

FINAL DESIGNS

After identifying UI design problems, we fixed some of the problems and tweaked the interactions based on the feedback from user testing and also our design intuitions.

 

 

 

REFLECTIONS

During this comprehensive user-centered design process, we have gathered lots of insights regarding how to design based on user research. Although it is a really messy process which usually means going back and forth with each stage, but being flexible towards problem solving is going to facilitate design decision making.

January 18, 2016 - No Comments!

JusTalk

DESIGN BRIEF

Improve the overall video communication experience for JusTalk customers across the globe.

JusTalk is a mobile application that provides video communication across IOS and Android devices. It has high quality services but the overall interactions need improvement. Therefore, the main goal for this project is to have a complete rebranding and overall change of interfaces to make the application app more intuitive and more attractive for its existing users. In the long run, with the improved customer experiences, JusTalk hope to attract more customers.

 

USER RESEARCH

Integrate my mindset to JusTalk users and trying to understand their main pain points.

 

Preliminary Research and Interview

Starting with the current problems, I interviewed 25 current users and 83 participants' surveys as well as ALL app store reviews. It is also important to figure out the different user groups. The main pain points people have with the current version is that the instructions are very confusing and also the interfaces have flow problems.

Customer Experience Journey

According to the feedback provided, below is a visualization of typical customer journey.

Personas

Among the users interviewed, I realize there are four main groups of users. One is the university student users who use JusTalk to socialize and make friends. The digital consumers are the young working population who are in your mid 20s and do not have a family yet. The third group is the parents group who have children and older parents to take care of. And finally the grandparents generation who want to always in touch with their children and grandchildren. Below is the visualization of the personas created based on the four types of customers.

 

Comparative Analysis

Analyzed 6 other popular video communication applications and found that true face-to-face communication is the opportunity for JusTalk.

Since this is a complete rebranding of JusTalk, I wanted to do more thorough research about the current opportunities and analyze what would be the most feasible and customer friendly way of the design direction. After going through review sites, testing different applications, I have found something interesting. Current video communications have pretty good image quality and video call services, but they do not provide real communications. For instance, if people are talking face-to-face, a lot more is going on other than just the images and voices. People also see each others expressions and lots of our messages are conveyed through different gestures and facial expressions. However, there's a gap between this need and the current video communication software. So the opportunity here is to promote real communications between people.

 

Design Process

Ideation

Initially I started with different ideas and concepts that could be added to JusTalk application.

Wireframe Prototype

Based on user research and comparative analysis, some sketches are made. With these sketches, wireframes are produced to create initial prototypes to test our research findings and if the designs are matching customer needs.

 

Design Iterations

After creating the wireframes, I did user testings with a few people and the still think that the true face-to-face connection is not made clear here. Going back to research findings and more concept brainstorming.

 

DELIVERABLES

After realizing that the interfaces would be visualization of how we communicate regular, the UI interfaces were produced.

 

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

This rebranding is not only limiting its scope to the current version of JusTalk. I have also explored the different possibilities of the future development for JusTalk. the main focus here is to imagine how video communication can be combined seamlessly into every aspect of our daily life. Therefore, the proposal imagined is that JusTalk interfaces can be projected onto different surfaces for better engagement.