Undertaking General Assembly’s UX Design one week course was one of my first steps to formally plotting a new career path in User Experience (UX) Design. To graduate the course, I was required to demonstrate my knowledge of the UX process by carrying out an end-to-end UX design project.
My chosen project aimed to explore how residents of medium density buildings, defined here as apartment blocks from 3 to10 levels; could create a better sense of community and belonging in an effort to improve mental health and additionally provide mechanisms to help remedy building issues that inevitably arise.
The primary approach to this project was one of social improvement, the scope was limited to this because of time and resource constraints with the imposed deadline (less than 1 week for completion). However, I recognise the need for this project to address commercial / business outcomes too, these were considered but for the sake of this initial sprint, were placed as secondary considerations to be explored later. Let’s jump in…
For anyone with an understanding of UX already, the British Design Council’s Double Diamond will be instantly recognisable, it is a common design model used to understand problems and explore them creatively, it enables innovative thinking to help find appropriate solutions or outcomes. The Double Diamond has 4 clearly defined phases that progress along the timeline of a UX project, practically speaking, the process itself is not as linear at it appears at first glance.
This project was carried out using the Double Diamond methodology.
Defining a problem space is my first step, it helps frame some assumptions I have generated from experience and prior discussions with residents of my own apartment block, these will be explored further through user research and competitive analysis.
Being able to provide an inclusive and effective environment for all people to communicate / report issues and build community in medium density living.
People in urban environments have a desire to engage with others around them and feel part of a community.
As more people occupy medium density living the need to preserve that sense of community is important for an individual’s mental health.
Residents would be willing to use an app to report issues, book facilities and interact in limited ways with other residents.
Renters often feel excluded or detached from building communities.
Residents are keen to have a means of interacting with each other for several reasons such as upcycling, activity planning, facility booking etc.
Residents want to see the progress and outcomes of issues that are reported to building management as they are resolved.
The user research for this project was undertaken at the height of Covid-19 Lockdown #2 in Melbourne, making things a little more challenging than expected. Combining that with the tight turnaround of the project (under a week) and the inevitable schedule conflicts with research candidates; the scope of the research phase was limited to just one target audience: Residents.
5 Residents were interviewed, selected to represent a broad range of demographics including: renters, owners, retired, working, unemployed and inclusion of different genders. In hindsight the omission of people with children was an oversight.
More about the research outcomes will be covered in the Define stage
While user research was taking place, competitive analysis was also underway to help shape an understanding of the marketplace that any potential solution may go into. A brief snap shot of the findings are found below:
Apt.App and Livly both provide comprehensive administration solutions and some social functions for residents. They do not provide a focus for owner occupiers, more centred around managing rental tenants and day to day facility administration.
PropertyMe does not provide community functions and is an offering that caters towards property management, individual owner investors and large-scale investors
The opportunity remains to focus on a community orientated service that is targeted to owner occupiers and renters so they can connect with each other and with the physical amenities they share.
After interviewing 5 residents, I reviewed the sessions thoroughly and complied the insights from each one onto a miro board. Now for the fun part, affinity mapping, synthesising the insights into categories of likeness and or theme. With an understanding of the challenges residents have I then created a primary and secondary persona from the themes generated in the affinity map. These personas were then used to flesh out the problem statements.
Primary Persona: Residents in medium density urban living need to be able to connect and communicate when problems arise so that they may have a safe and happy community.
Secondary Persona: Residents in medium density urban living need to be able to connect and communicate for social purposes so that they may build connections in their immediate local community.
By distilling these personas down to a singular core problem I was then able to determine how to proceed. This is part of the convergence cycle on the double diamond methodology; that is, framing a response to the problems statements using a "How might we" proposition. This step will help lead me into the Design phase, and a opportunity to diverge once again.
Beginning the design phases bring me back to a familiar setting with my history in Graphic Design. Using the crazy8 method of ideation, I began to come up with some ideas on how these problem statements may be addressed. Some ideas included using a community noticeboard, newsletter, website, mobile app, social gatherings, a building pet, and discussion groups.
To address the needs of the problem a mobile app was chosen to provide residents a community forum, incident reporting, a way to organise special interest groups and provide support for each other. It aims to promote inclusiveness for people who do not use traditional social media and respect individuals’ online privacy.
Insights that came out of affinity mapping are then paired up with features that would deliver the desired outcomes
In an effort to shape a minimum viable product (MVP), I carried out feature prioritisation for the major components of the app, along with standard app functionality that would be critical for an initial product.
After defining the prioritisation of features, I began to map out major task flows and user flow to build the framework for the UI design and wireframe prototypes.
Putting together the first physical visualisation of a project is always a rewarding experience. This feeling no doubt comes from my background in Graphic Design. At this point the Double Diamond process can become quite circular, bouncing back and forth between the design and deliver phases with regularity. The sketched wireframes morphed into wireflows that I used to test the basic user journeys. Some interesting feedback came out of this process which helped refine the initial iterations, more on that in the next section.
Test early, test often. So as soon as I had something tangible I jumped into some testing to ensure things were off to a good start. Some helpful insights were provide including:
Feedback through the process helped inform on design decisions and provide direction through the transition from sketched wireframes into a digital prototype which can be viewed here. This is an ongoing project, one of continuous learning
Explore the medium fidelity prototype
Trust the process because it works.
Using a human centred mindset in combination with design thinking processes is an excellent way to ensure user and business outcomes are baked into a product from the get-go.
It is often hard to put your biases aside, however when you have data in front of you that is straight from the user and or stakeholder’s mouth - it helps clear the fog that bias can create.
Being able to sit back and listen without speaking or guiding is an art from. When you watch (or listen) problems will appear naturally and my job is to observe that.
The back and forth between the deliver and design phase really made me think about the end-product with a user / human centred focus, the product or problems will almost fix themselves from there.