The D.I.Y. Experience

User Research

For this project, my team and I decided to conduct user interviews for a more in-depth data collection for this research process. Prior to conducting our own interviews, I suggested that we have the same base of questions that we ask all of the interviewees to ensure that we would be gathering the similar data. With this, we asked our interviewees the necessary questions that were consistent across the board. We interviewed a total of 7 users.

Synthesizing Stage

After we completed our interviews, I initiated an affinity map to determine how many repeating pain points we had between all of our users. With this, we determined there were a lot of individuals who utilized YouTube as a primary means of instructional guidance, needed expert assistance, or needed a better method to track and budget for larger projects. With all this, we then placed our findings onto a cartesian plot to help us determine our two personas for the life of this project.

Journey Map

A journey map was created for both of our personas; Billy and Erica. I created a journey map for Billy, who was the persona with less experience. Please view the journey map photograph depicted below.

Ideation

As a unit, the team and I round-tabled to discuss potential ideas to alleviate pain points of our users. Considering the repeating pain points our personas, we had numerous ideas. We went with the ideas which had high impact for both users. Please contact me for more in-depth features which were incorporated!

Wireframes

Below you will find some of my initial wireframes.

Hi-Fi design

After careful inspection of the initial wireframes, we made subtle chances and I created the high fidelity designs below.

Prototype

After everything appeared to be visually perfect, the team and I elected to move into transforming the Hi-Fi design into a functional prototype for both of the persona's user flows. I completed the prototyping for one of the two personas, but both had great success in the testing stage!

Testing

I tested both user flows by giving the testing user a prompt, and giving them tasks to complete with no operational assistance. There was one suggestion on the prototype I created, which suggested I rename or consolidate some of the resources due to being overwhelmed with all that was available. With this I renamed some to ensure clarity when choosing the provided resources.

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