Graduation Project - User Experience Design

Note: Due to a non-disclosure agreement, I am very limited in my ability to document this project publicly.

My graduation project had two sets of requirements: one set from the University, the other set from the business I was interning at to work on the project.
From the University: I was tasked to find a business and work on an existing product or work on an entirely new project. The guidelines were that within this project I would be able to follow all the phases in the design thinking process. Additionally, I would have to conduct my own research, create my own designs and prototype, and perform my own user testing and prototype iteration. Lastly, the project had to last a minimum of 15 weeks.

From the business I interned at: I was asked to research, design and prototype a new social networking application. The app had to be curated to a specific social interaction for a specified target user group. Additionally, how these social interactions would be organized and facilitated on the app had to be designed.
Because the project was very fresh with a broad concept, I settled with the product owner to focus on the ‘one on one’ interactions of the target users in the concept. To compensate, I did have to ensure that the design was easily scalable for subsequent designers that would tackle the remaining aspects of the concept. Effectively, I was to lead the UX design and prepare for a final hand off before I finish my internship.

Work individually in a self proposed project with an external product owner.

Design and prototype an exclusively mobile experience.

Apply the accumulated knowledge and experience of the UX program.

Unfortunately due to an NDA, I’m not at liberty to disclose exactly what the final deliverable for this project was.
The final design was a mobile social networking application that would allow users to organize one on one interactions in several methods. The intended outcome of the design was for users to hopefully continue with additional future interactions without having to rely on the design to do so.

Again, due to the NDA, I am limited in how I am able to document the process. I will go over the broader phases and steps in the project. However, I can’t substantiate this with documentation of the results.

Following the design thinking process, I planned this project into two larger phases: Research and Design. The research phase was broken up into three smaller phases: Planning, Research, and Analysis.
The design phase was similarly broken into smaller phases, those being: Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Additionally, these smaller phases would be repeated several times cyclically managed in Scrum sprints. Each sprint would conclude with a demo to the PO and my project supervisor from the university. Four sprints were planned with a small break from the project planned after the conclusion of the second sprint. Finally, the final sprint of the design phase would focus more on polishing the design to be handed off to the PO and mark the end of my project and internship at the business; I would continue a few more weeks to conclude the project deliverables for the university’s requirements.

To research the target user group, I had prepared several research methods. The methods were selected to provide a substantial mix of quantitative and qualitative data. I aimed to have the quantitative data provide a generalized view of the target user group. Then, using the qualitative data, I would be able to substantiate and humanize the statistics of the user group. By humanizing the data, I was able to find opportunities for interesting design based on certain target users’ experiences that either complimented the quantitative data or starkly contrasted it.

For quantitative data, I created a survey that was distributed as wide as possible within the target user group. A simple method to gather a lot of data concerning the concept and the target users’ experience with competitor products; asking their experience (high/lowlights), what they would want to see changed/added to the experiences.

For the qualitative data, I had prepared two methods. First was what I called a ‘Personal Experience Reflection’. A method with heavy bias, but effectively served as a personal interview - placing yourself as the target user - regarding the concept. This method served as a basis to define assumptions on the concepts, assumptions that were used when preparing the second method, Ethnographic Interview. The assumptions were used to create some questions - usually mini-tour questions, but occasionally grand tour questions. The aim was to challenge these assumptions and be surprised by different ways of thinking. Additionally, results from the survey were used to create both types of questions with the aim to either define context to the answers or extrapolate them.

The sample of the target user group had some distinct decisions. Initially, I aimed to get an even split of various factors within the target user group. Factors such as: gender, personality, and ethnicity. While initially, this was the case for the survey, I ended up skewing the balance of the sample - for the interview - more towards women, introverts, and foreigners (to the Netherlands). I found that these target users provided an opportunity for interesting design, as they expressed a lot of needs and challenging experiences that required careful consideration and processing to include them in the concept and deliver a satisfying experience.

The research phase was concluded by processing the data and preparing it for the design phase. The data was condensed into insight statements, which were then transformed into User Personas which motivated respective User Journey Maps and a Design Vision.

Coming from the research phase, the first sprint was slightly longer than the rest as extra time was dedicated to utilizing all the processed data to create new original ideas for design. Additionally, time was spent conducting a review on certain competitor products to identify some norms and best practices for mobile designs associated with the PO’s concept.

The ideation phase was split to use two types of methods, a diverging method and a converging method. This would result in a large quantity of ideas that were considered, rejected, combined, or transformed into a handful of high quality ideas to be implemented into a prototype.
To diverge, I started by creating a series of ‘How Might We’ (HMW) questions based on the processed data. Then I sketched five ideas per HMW question; those would then be converged.
To converge, I had ‘creative talks’ with several target users that participated in the interviews to get an opinion and some feedback on the ideas. I mainly sought to get an opinion of which ideas excited them the most and how they would like to see it in existing competitor apps. The final convergence before a prototypable concept is created, is to run a similar creative talk with the PO, but with a greater deal of scrutiny.

Prototyping the concept followed three distinct iteration types: Wireframing, Lo-Fi, and Hi-Fi prototyping. The prototypes were created and iterated with Figma.

With the wireframe prototype, it featured only the essential interactions to experience the flow of the prototype. Consisting only of placeholder text and wireframe elements (images, buttons, etc.), it represents the base layout and structure of the design. This iteration was where the most radical changes were made due to the simplicity of the elements. Unfortunately, due to all the placeholder elements, the design had very little context for what each screen was representing in the concept. This resulted in a very constrained opportunity for testing where only the broader layout of the design could be discussed with the PO and target user testers. However, by using a card sorting technique, I was able to curate design considerations for an optimized layout.

The second sprint was a transition period from wireframing to a Lo-Fi prototype. Additionally, I dedicated myself to using tools within Figma that would allow for easier smaller iterations as well as establishing the design to be easily expandable into a Hi-Fi prototype. By replacing a lot of the placeholder text and elements, I was now able to run user testing with the tester interacting with the prototype. The protocol I followed for testing was to first allow the user to explore the prototype and familiarize with the design. Then I provided some tasks to be accomplished in the prototype - to gauge how intuitive the design is and how effective the users could be. Then concluding with a creative talk covering specific changes I created in the iteration and what I already planned for the subsequent iteration. I also asked for things that stuck out for them or to talk through tasks they got stuck on.

The third sprint, after the break, followed a similar structure to the prior sprint. The difference in this sprint was that I finalized the transition to a Lo-Fi prototype and began preparing and transitioning some elements to a Hi-Fi prototype. Additionally, I dialed back the discussion on large changes to focus more on polishing the design.
That leads to the fourth and final sprint with the focus entirely on polishing the design and preparing it to be handed off. This sprint is where the Hi-Fi prototype would be finalized, meaning that a style tile was created and that a color scheme, font styles, and micro interactions/animations were implemented into the prototype. Testing in this sprint was simplified to quality insurance and ensure that there are no unintended interactions or visual issues with the prototype.

This project is the capstone to my studies and time at the university, it represents my three year journey of learning and applying UX design in various projects. A major challenge in this project was my position in it, essentially leading the UX. It was the ultimate test of my skills, especially because it was intended to be inherited by subsequent designers to iterate on. Not only did that mean that my design had to be thoroughly validated and spot on, but also scaleable for change even after the Hi-Fi prototype iteration. I managed this by frequently consulting with various stakeholders in the project and compartmentalizing my designs to effectively be a stand alone product from the PO’s initial concept. This meant additional features could be added to the design, but my work wouldn’t need to change to enable that. Additionally creating a basis for design within Figma, through several bespoke prototype components, meant that subsequent features would also fit the visual design of the prototype.
This project provided a nice confidence boost as I was able to effectively define, plan, and execute a project without much stress to my work life balance to meet all the goals.