Celebrating Good Design
A few weeks ago, Birchal was recognised for its Digital Interface design at the Good Design Awards in Sydney. It was glamorous and prestigious anniversary event that celebrated great design and the hard work and effort that goes into creating beautiful creative products and services that change the world.
In this post, I just wanted to provide some insight into the work and effort went into our interface design and user experience. Because the process was not glamorous or beautiful.
Starting Point
A while back I attended an event where a designer spoke of the challenges of creating products that meet and exceed the expectations of consumers in the digital world. In a world where consumers expect web applications and mobile apps to be intuitive, look modern, be responsive to all devices and be fast!
Apps and websites like Uber, Airbnb, Instagram, FB Messenger and Twitter all set the benchmark and expectations for digital services like Birchal. People love these apps because they continue to push the boundaries of good design.
I believe that unless you’ve a deep tech startup or have no competition — you must create products and services that people love. See this post I came across recently: Minimum Lovable Product v.s Minimum Viable Product
People share things they love.
Finding Talent
We sought outside help for UI and UX design from day 1 — and we did this for 2 reasons.
- To work with someone that doesn’t know our industry
- To find expertise in mobile/responsive design
Markos Evans was our choice because he had a very diverse portfolio — covering many different industries including sports apps, wearables, backend interfaces, dashboards and on-boarding processes. Markos also had an appreciation for current design trends and the user perception of modern design.
User Experience & Wireframing
In hindsight, this was probably the most important stage.
When you’re in this step, it can feel frustrating because you just want to visualise what the end interface might look like.
At this stage, having someone challenge every aspect to the user experience is critical. Markos didn’t have prior knowledge or experience of using an Equity Crowdfunding service and constantly challenged our assumptions and ideas.
We had two realisations from this process — typically, companies cannot expect to just launch a campaign to raise capital and have investments flow in. Secondly, the investment process for retail investors is new and quite involved. Particularly when risk warning and disclosures appear to try and put people off.
Solution One: Company Overview and Pitch Deck
A page to showcase the company and allow the founder to engage potential investors, well in advance on a capital raise.
Solution 2: Investor On-boarding
A simple step-by-step process to gather the relevant investor information whilst also meeting our licensing requirements.
User Interface Design
Strangely this stage didn’t take as long as we expected. We sought inspiration from a dozen websites and did mockups for every key user interaction.
At this stage, Markos was required to discuss each aspect to the interface design with Josh (our lead developer) to find out what was possible (or viable!).
Once we locked down the key user interfaces — everything fell into place very quickly. Each component for user inputs was designed individually and the first version of the user interface design guide was produced to allow Josh to start prototyping.
Page Transitions & User Experience
Whilst the designer can provide the visuals/designs of the interface — one aspect that can’t be demonstrated easily is the transitions users experience whilst using the app. Example: what happens to the Next button when the user clicks the button — and how fast these transitions happen.
Without these, users can be unaware of what’s happening or simply questioning if they did the correct thing. If a form has been entered incorrectly — is this being communicated clearly to allow the user to resolve things quickly?
Iterations & Beta Testing
The first version is not going to be perfect — but you must put in place ways to observe your users and how they interact with the website. Watch users in person and start recording how your users click through your app. Hotjar is one service we used initially to view the heatmaps and user flow through the on-boarding processes.
You may have a beautiful website — but if users are not interacting with the website as you designed, you’ve failed. You may need to work to ensure your Calls to Action (CTA’s) are clear — even if the you compromise on some design aspects.
With 2-3 relatively minor adjustments to the size and position of some key CTA’s — we seen a 150% increase in click throughs.
You MUST compromise on design to ensure that your users interacts with your app in the way you originally designed it — right back at the wire-framing stage.
We always appreciate user/member feedback — so if you’re one, please leave me a comment.
