Introduction:
Duration: January 2022 - April 2022
Roles: Researcher, Designer
Team Member: Maddi Miller
Tools: Adobe XD, Mural, Photoshop
Summary:
Workshop is an app for all kinds of creatives. Whether you are a designer, illustrator, painter, etc. you can use this app to grow as a creative, bond with others, get personalized experiences, and much more!
The Challenge:
~Timeline: Everything from interviews to user testing to prototypes had to be done within 4 months.
~Resources: The timeline and budget confined the product team to deciding which elements were most important to display within the final product.
~User profile: Every creative individual is unique just like their work. How do you create a platform that fits the wants, needs, and desires of such a variety of users?
Background:
This study is to support the development of my group's app, Workshop, and to learn more about the needs of various creative communities as well as how to balance stakeholder and user needs and desires.
Goals:
~Understand where in the creative process creatives need help and if they feel like they have the support that they need.
~Build an understanding of how and why users want to connect with other creatives
~Build an understanding of pain points that our app could help solve for users in their creative process
~Build an understanding of our users' online experience and how we can improve it
~Build an understanding of stakeholder perspectives and views in regard to a product
~Understand and learn how to consider both user and stakeholder perspectives when creating a product
Sample Interview Questions:
User Interview Questions:
~What type of creative work do you do?
~What got you interested in that type of creative work?
~What skills do you think you could improve upon?
~Do you feel satisfied with your creative portfolio?
~What is easy about creative work?
~What is difficult about creative work?
~How do you interact with others online?
~What is an online community you like?
~Do you have people you can get feedback from on your creative work?
~Mentors/mentees?
~How would you describe your ideal mentor/mentee relationship?
~What is your learning style?
~How/where do you find inspiration for your work?
~What is easy about sharing your work with others?
~What is hard about sharing your work with others?
~What got you interested in that type of creative work?
~What skills do you think you could improve upon?
~Do you feel satisfied with your creative portfolio?
~What is easy about creative work?
~What is difficult about creative work?
~How do you interact with others online?
~What is an online community you like?
~Do you have people you can get feedback from on your creative work?
~Mentors/mentees?
~How would you describe your ideal mentor/mentee relationship?
~What is your learning style?
~How/where do you find inspiration for your work?
~What is easy about sharing your work with others?
~What is hard about sharing your work with others?
Stakeholder Interview Questions:
~What do you see your role in this project as?
~What is the business opportunity here?
~What are the Key Performance Indicators?
~What are the most common problems you see creatives/consumers facing within this market?
~Where do you see us differentiating ourselves from competitors? Where do you see similarities?
~What constraints do you see?
~What are your worries for this project?
~In order for this app to be successful from a business perspective what will we need to achieve? What would cause this app to be unsuccessful from a business perspective?
~How will you define success for this project?
Methodology:
This will be a 1:1 interview consisting of 6 participants. Each participant interview will last 30-45 minutes. Each interview will be conducted either in person or over the phone based on location of the participants.
Participant Screening:
Users:
~18-50 year olds
~Had experience being online
~Has 1 creative practice they are interested in or already have experience in
Stakeholder:
~Working in a professional creative field
Affinity Mapping:
Stakeholder:
~Understand our key performance indicators (size of user base, how active users are, consumer feedback/complaints).
~Be responsive to parts of app that aren't performing as well and adjust them.
~Build a strong community! This will provide user retention.
Users:
~Users want the option to remain anonymous when posting to reduce anxiety.
~Users want a way to turn their hobby into a professional opportunity.
~Users want a platform that is inclusive, welcoming, non-anxious, and safe.
~Users cited they didn't have sources to receive constructive feedback from.
~Users felt they didn't know what skills they should improve on or where they should focus their time and energy to develop professionally.
~Users citied they had a difficult time finding inspiration and wished they had a personalized experience to guide them
Competitive Analysis:
Through comparing 4 other platforms with Workshop, we found that Workshop was the only platform that created a "one-stop shop" for creatives.
We also found that no other platform we compared included anonymity as well as personal questionnaires. These features would really separate Workshop out from some of its competitors and allow Workshop to solve the pain points of anxiety around posting creative work as well as the frustration of not having a personalized experience for creative development.
Through this analysis, we determined it would be important to keep the app free as many of our users may be new to the creative field and not willing to pay.
Problem Statement:
Most creatives are online for a variety of reasons, but there is not a single app that is able to has been able to provide creatives with all their needs (selling, community, inspiration, mentorship, and feedback) while also providing an inclusive, safe, and non-anxious experience.
User Flow:
Wireframes:
Low-Fidelity Prototype:
Login & Onboarding
Community/Collaborate
Skills
Inspiration
Upload & Sell
Profile
Usability Testing:
For our testing, we asked 5 potential users (determined from our original participant screening) to complete predetermined tasks. Our testing was set to last around 30 minutes for each participant.
User Script:
Hi ______, my name is _______. I am working on a team of developers creating a mobile app for creatives to collaborate, learn new skills, and network. Thank you for taking the time to work with us on this project.
I’d like to begin by asking you a few questions so we can get to know a little bit about who you are.
Is it alright with you if I take notes on our conversation today?
So ________, could you tell us what your current occupation is and what specifically it entails?
How old are you?
Would you consider yourself a Creative? What types of creative work do you do?
Have you ever used any online platforms to learn new creative skills, collaborate, or share your work?
Okay, now I’d like to start going through some tasks on our app with you? As a reminder, we’re here to test the app and not you so please feel free no pressure to complete any task any specific way. All and any feedback is extremely appreciated so don’t hesitate to give us any comments you come up with. Please think aloud as you’re using our program. We really want to hear your thoughts, like where you’re navigating on the page, why you’re clicking somewhere, what you expect to happen when you do click, that sort of thing. If you have questions, feel free to ask me, and I’ll answer all of them I can.
Tasks:
Great, so I’d like you to begin by creating an account.
Fantastic! Now I’d like you to try and learn a new skill on our app.
Amazing! Can you try and find some inspirational work to reference for your next project?
Perfect! Lastly, I’d love to see you find a mentor or mentee on our app.
Thank you so much for going through all of those screens! I’d like to ask a few quick questions to wrap things up.
What were your overall impressions of the app?
What did you like most about your experience?
What did you dislike most about your experience?
Were there any features that you think would help you as a creative that weren’t featured in our prototype?
Were there any comments you wanted to make during your experience on the app that you forgot to mention?
Fantastic. Well, thank you again so much for taking the time out of your day to take part in this study with us. Your input today will be a huge help in our future development of this app.
Findings:
~Once users realized the importance the navigation bar, they had a much easier time moving between categories on the app
~Users enjoyed the concept of having a single app for all their creative needs
~Users and stakeholder felt that the word "community" created a more welcoming space than "collaborate"
~Concerns were brought up about harmful users using anonymity to bully others
~Mentions of lack of navigation arrows, users could not go back in the surveys
Changes Made:
~Added settings gear in top left for easier access.
~Included option to flag harmful users
~Included anonymity toggle to make accessible no matter where you are in the app
~Created navigation back buttons so that users could more easily navigate between pages
~Determined the word "community" fit one of our app categories better than "collaborate"
~Added percentages to recommended, so that users could more easily see what fit them the best
Changes to Prototype Based on User Testing:
Settings:
~Added settings gear in upper left
~Gave option to flag a user
~Constant access to anonymity on/off toggle
Navigation:
~Added back button in surveys, so users can more easily navigate
Community:
~When asked, both users and stakeholder felt that community was a better word than collaborate
Percent Match:
~Users felt that having percents associated with their matches would help them make an easier decision by seeing with matches fit them best
Stakeholder Final Interview:
Have we met the business objectives originally defined?
~Yes, with the exception of some user flows (namely selling & purchasing) not being completed.
Where have we been successful?
~Did a great job (through messaging & design style) of building a sense of creative inclusivity and community. It is a fun aesthetic that matches the values and intention of the app - original, quirky design that matches the value of originality and inclusivity.
What do we need to improve on?
~Complete all user flows. Work to make them as intuitive as possible to promote users to sell & purchase.
Where are there further opportunities to work on?
~Adding advertisements into the user flows as another revenue stream/opportunity
~Be weary with this though to focus on selecting advertisers who match your values so as to not detract from the sense of community you have created. Choose advertisers who also promote inclusivity, originality, etc.
High Fidelity Prototype:
Login & Onboarding
Community
(Groups, Mentorship, & Feedback)
Skills
Inspiration
Upload & Sell
Profile
Reflection & Forward Thinking:
I learned a lot from this experience. I not only got to work on a team, but also got to interact with a stakeholder and further educate myself on business needs and why they are important just like user needs.
I learned the importance of communication and working as a team through this project. It is great to have big hopes for an app, but it is important to be able to step away and decide what elements need to be changed and what you can and cannot do in regard to working a strict schedule.
In the future, I would like to add UI animation elements as well as build out a few more pages that my team was not able to get to by the deadline.
If this app were to be fully produced and put out on the market, my team would look into the revenue and user test on users that have used the app. I would ask questions such as, "what can be improved", "what is your favorite/least favorite parts of the app and why", and "what features do you use the most". This would help my team understand the most and least effective parts of the app and what we could change to produce greater revenue and get more people using the app.
