Rob Rowe - UXDi

A collection of work and thoughts during my 10 week General Assembly course

[robrowe]

Some UX on a Sunday!

[uxdilondonautumn2014]

Week 2 of the final project and the students are deep into the research of their client’s projects.

[robrowe]

My new portfolio progress, different background, black icons for sections, better content and reduced shadows. Its getting closer to done! (for this case study at least)

[uxdilondonautumn2014]

[alexcainblog]

GA coding week

[robrowe]

My Current Personal Brand (not final)

My personality is confident but relaxed. I prioritise space, quality and clarity while providing a sense of honesty. I have an inviting mood and a strong style without needing to shout about it. I look for the simple and efficient solution to given problems.

[robrowe]

This is a mood board I have created explores a relaxed but confident mood and shows lots of soft gradients and clear images with ample space around them to entice a calm and confident feeling.

[robrowe]

Project 3 - Amazon Prime

Brief

Our brief was to increase social activity on Amazon Prime Instant Video. The aim was to recall the shared social experience of TV in the past into the social media heavy instant video accessible future.

Research

Our Research compared immediate competitors such as Netflix and services like Twitch, a website that streams feed of live gaming, and has built a massive social user base (45 million users in 2013). This informed how companies cultivated social success. We also conducted a survey of 65 users to find how people liked to consume content and how they share it. We followed this with a number of user interviews to get a more precise understanding of how people watch and share movies and TV. We found most enjoyed sharing the experience especially after a viewing and that people watched in a variety of ways but especially enjoyed shared experiences.

After taking in the research we defined our aim to “Create conversations by syncing films, friends & movie makers.” 

Idea

To help generate ideas we created personas and scenarios to help us understand and apply user traits and understand how they approached using the service. This understanding combined with research helped us outline key features to enhance our users social requirements. We decided to add a feature to the app called “Prime Lounge” which would allow users to co-watch content, syncing movies so when they start on one screen they start on all users screens in a chosen group. In addition to this a group conversation would begin on users mobiles so they could share movie moments with each other on the app in a chatroom that would dynamically link to the movie showing things such as movie progress. This conversation could then continue after the movie and then be saved. This we felt helped to unify peoples viewing experience while letting them share it socially so fulfilling our aim.

Design

We designed this feature to shadow the current app fitting our new feature to the existing app so we didn't upset less social users. To help this process we conducted the design studio method rapidly sketching and iterating ideas as a group till we closed in on a unified design. We ended up choosing a bottom screen menu bar that allowed access to our feature, displayed proudly at the centre, without compromising the rest of the app. The other screens in our features flow where accessed after or from the menu bar and designed in a way to compliment the current app. From this sketching we created a number of wireframes.

Testing

To construct a solution that worked it was important to test our design. We put the wireframes into a clickable prototype and tested it with some of our users. This informed us of changes that were needed to improve the app and we implemented them into increasingly higher fidelity prototypes. Once further developed we took the new prototypes to a nearby cinema to find relevant users to test our app for more feedback that lead to further refining the apps interface.

Final

We ended with a high fidelity prototype that had been through several iterations to ensure usability in an app that had been designed to compliment Amazon Primes current interface while bringing a social and unified element to its viewing experience. Next we would like to work on other features we had explored such as VIP chatrooms that allowed users to talk to movie actors and makers while co-watching with them to build on our social emphasis and help promote excitement around watching Movies on Amazon Prime.

[maitedalila]

Golden ratio

[uxdilondonautumn2014]

[uxdilondonautumn2014]

Mid way point for project three. Personas, sketching, presenting, prioritising, guest speakers, and post-it’s. Lot of post-it’s.

[robrowe]

Norway's new bank notes are pixel art dreams

Norway's new banknotes are quite literally works of art. After inviting submissions from a number of design houses, the country's Norges Bank has chosen

Pretty cool new bank note design

[robrowe]

Serif vs. Sans: the final battle

First it was the Capulets versus the Montagues; then it was Coke versus Pepsi; and the latest epic battle? Serif versus sans-serif

A useful and interesting comparison

[robrowe]

Project 2 Summary

Competitive Analysis To start with I researched a number of e-commerce toy sites. This showed trends among different areas of the industry with the big brands selling everything but causing sites to appear muddled and confused. The departments stores were better organised but did not manage to build excitement around the toys they sold. The boutique stores did this very well and had clean grown up sites but did this with very little stock. A site was needed that could balance the successful attributes of these stores. I realised to achieve this a site would need to be able to navigate stock efficiently such as with the department stores while retaining the unique and enticing feel of the boutiques.

Personas Several personas were provided to inform the decision making process. Whilst building the site it was made sure the personas were well understood and that they would theoretically be pleased with the outcome.

User Flow User flows were put together for each of the personas to understand how they usually would go about browsing and purchasing. These user flows informed how the navigation would be designed for the users benefit. From this I realised the navigation had to be kept simple and familiar for users.

Site Map/Card Sorting To best construct a site that would allow for lots of products whilst not feeling as overwhelming as the big brands card sorting was conducted. This watched users place popular products into provided categories to understand common presumptions of the product. This process was repeated four times providing nine top level categories. Enough for navigation to be fluid but not so many it became hard work for the user. These categories and other site elements were built into a site map for an overall picture of how elements within the site should be put together.

Sketching Sketching helped get many ideas down on paper. These were rapidly iterated producing ideas such as creating product search pages that allowed for products to be displayed over the entire width of the screen. This was achieved by making all faceted navigation drop down from the top nag as oppose to appearing along the side. A key development to this solution. I also realised while sketching it was important for the top nag to be present on all pages (with the exception of checkout). This was as the varying navs on the larger brand sites could often lead to a feeling of confusion and broke down the flow of the sites. To ender users to the brand I realised navigational consistency was important. Images had worked well on the other boutique stores when they were large and not surrounded by too much information so I attempted to make sure this informed the direction of the design.

Wireframes Once sketches had been finished they were translated into computer drawn wireframes. This helped provide a more accurate representation of on screen scale allowing elements to be organised more effectively. This lead to changes such as re positioning of basket and account options at the top of the page to provide more space for categories (this requirement for space was missed during sketching). The checkout process also received a lot of work at this stage. I realised this process traditionally really distracted from the feel of toy stores. I introduced more relaxed phrasing and built the brand stars into a graphic showing progress. A large congratulatory star was also introduced on completion to leave customers with a sense of brand satisfaction.

Prototype Once wireframes were constructed to a high enough fidelity they were built into a prototype using Marvel. This added imaging and text and gave a feel of how the site would work.

Testing Once the site was put in a prototype this was used for testing, getting four users to complete select tasks and monitoring their levels of success and listening to their comments on the process as it happened. This lead to a number of new improvements such as a link to reviews and text to tell the user they would receive email confirmation. The site did however test fairly successfully with users confidently completing tasks and enjoying the large visuals produced by the design. Users also importantly commented that although the top navigation was very intuitive, making it larger may have made it more inviting. This on reflection would also have helped it to fit into the theme of large imaging throughout the site.

Improvements/Summary The site design seemed to be promising judging on testing informing of clear navigation, large imaging and a successful branding feel with friendly language, a sophisticated look and items such as fun brand stars during checkout. If the project were to continue the site would need further testing. Also although provided on the home page there was lots of room for work on the brands message and history to really comfort users with an inviting brand image. A key part of the re design was the zoom feature on the product page and this also required testing not possible during previous iterations.

[jbullerux]

Establishing users, goals, features and benefit using affinity mapping, led by jontysharples at uxdilondonautumn2014. Really effectivve and can see how very useful this would be in a business.

[robrowe]

Haha, it looks like we've broken Jonty!

[robrowe]

Michael Mcintyre - Comedy Gala

No Copyright Intended. For Entertainment Purposes Only.

After about 30secs in Mcintyre talks about the annoyances of form filling, very funny and actually shows quite well how important good form design is!

[robrowe]

Todays Afinity Mapping, helping us to understand our users and how they affect our outcomes