Pick-n-Del

Bhawna Gulati
Aug 28, 2017 · 6 min read

The objective of my first project at the UXDI Course at GA was to create an interactive prototype of a Mobile Application, that would solve a problem that one of my classmates encountered in her life.

In order to create this App we explored several UX techniques such as: User Interviews, Concept Mapping, Storyboarding, User Flows, Wireframes, Sketching, Prototyping (using paper & also Marvel) & Testing. This concluded with a presentation of our work, the design process, and the app prototype to our faculty and classmates.

User Research: The first step was to interview my target user, Mariane, a young independent woman, who had recently moved into a new house.

User interview with Mariane

In my chat with her, she told me that she was in the process of setting up her new place, and was having to spend most of her weekends shopping for essential household items from stores such as Ikea & Argos. She was feeling stressed out as they wouldn’t deliver her shopping items to her house at a time convenient to her, and was unhappy about having to spend most of her weekends picking up essential household items from these stores, instead of spending her time on things she enjoyed doing, such as pole-fitness.

As we spoke further about this, I was able to infer a few key things that Mariane found particularly frustrating about arranging for deliveries for her online purchases, and these were -

  • Having to wait a long time for essential items to be delivered
  • A minimum spend criteria with certain stores for delivery to be an option
  • Some products were only available for pick-up (No delivery at all)
  • Wide time slots when delivery could arrive (8am to 1p, for example), and so having to stay at home for that long a duration

A lot of these aspects to the problem became more clear as I prepared a concept map of all the information I had gathered during the user interview.

Concept Mapping for information gathered during user interview

Looking at these inter-relationships, I was able to narrow down to the core problem and validate it with Mariane, before thinking of a possible solution.

She was happy to make the online purchases on the individual shop sites, it was getting them all delivered to her house at a time convenient to her which was a problem that needed to be solved.

Challenge: Arrange for easy delivery of Mariane’s online purchases from different stores.

Once the core problem (and thus, the scope of this project) was identified, I moved to define the outcome statement and depict it in the form of a storyboard -

Storyboard depicting the Outcome Statement

Given the goal of the user, I moved on to design the user flow that would most logically lead her to its completion.

User Flow

The main components of the user flow are —

  • User lets the app know which orders to pick up and deliver,
  • User then arranges for delivery of these products for a date and time that works best for her.

Having established the user flow, I worked on some initial wireflows for each of the screens that Mariane as the user would see —

Wireflows — first draft

I gathered preliminary user feedback on these wireframes, and refined them further so the screens would contain only the main information that the user would need / like to see.

The user flow itself was seen as efficient and robust, and only a few changes to the UI elements were suggested to make the screens look less busy. Mariane and a few other classmates who looked at the wireframes agreed that each steps in the flow was necessary and critical to ensuring that the correct instructions were being given to the app by the user.

I then refined the wireflows to incorporate all the feedback I had received, (such as for the first screen, the user not being able to infer that they could choose multiple stores at the same time) and then went on to create more detailed sketches, which I used to create a paper prototype that I was able to test with my user, Mariane, as well as three other classmates.

Some of the revised screens include -

Revised wireflows post preliminary user feedback

User Testing: The testing process was quite fascinating, as I was able to further narrow down on the core elements of each screen that would enable the user to achieve their goal.

A classmate testing the paper prototype of my app

It was interesting to note that while a couple of the users who tested the paper prototype didn’t see the need to include the details of their online purchases in this app (on the Review Summary screen, for example), my main user, Mariane, appreciated that she was able to view those details and hence know what items she was going to receive on the delivery date.

I came up with the idea of adding the option to View Details or Hide them as the user might prefer, and this was appreciated as a great solution / feature by all users.

With all these iterations done, I then proceeded to refine the prototype to hi-fidelity using my learnings about colour, typography and the various other elements in visual design.

Going back to the user problem, and how my app could help solve the same, I decided to first create the brand values for the app. The brand values that emerged through this process (and iterated over various moodboards) were — Reliable, Agile, Simple, and Friendly.

Having arrived at the brand values, I applied the design principles I had learnt to my mid-fidelity prototype, followed by user testing and feedback. The colour palette was determined by creating various iterations and version of moodboards, and I went for colours that enhanced and reinforced my brand values.

Here’s the hi-fidelity prototype I created for the app in Invision (which I chose to name Pick-n-Del).

The app would hopefully make the house move experience a lot more easy and stress-free for Mariane, leaving her relaxed and with a lot of time at hand to enjoy things she likes to do!

As next steps, I would like to focus on improving the UI of the various screens and make them look cleaner and more intuitive. I would also like to add additional features such as ability to enable/disable notifications, and create user profiles.

Overall it was a great learning experience — looking forward to Week 2!

)

Bhawna Gulati

Written by

UX Designer | Observer | Nutella lover. www.bhawnagulati.com

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