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UpHome
This project was focused on designing an application for a new company called UpHome. The company focused on making luxury bathrooms affordable. UpHome hired UE Group, a UX based company, to design both their website and application. As a sponsored project in my UX Design studio, my team was chosen to design the application. The application was intended to involve Augmented Reality in order for the customers to visualize their bathroom experience in their homes.
Project Overview
Sponsor - UE Group
My group worked with UE Group to develop a product for a startup company called UpHome. This company specializes in innovation and upscale home renovation as an affordable luxury. Since the company is currently in the beginning phases of development for this service, our team had the opportunity to be more explorative in designing an application.
Design Challenge
For this project my team had been tasked by the UE Group to design a mobile app for UpHome. This mobile app was purposed to make it easier for users to visualize replacement showers and their elements, so that the user can better understand their customizations digitally and have the ability to change elements of their shower.
Targeted User Group
We were designing for homeowners who are first time UpHome customers that are wanting to renovate their shower and have strong design preferences.
Tools Used
- Figma
- Whimsical
- Canva
Research Techniques
- Competitive Analysis
- Evaluative Research
- Secondary Research
Final Deliverables
- Design Documentation
- Interactive Prototype
- Research Report
Personal Contributions
Research
Communication
Mockup Design
- Conducted competitive analysis
- Conducted interviews
- Conducted Secondary Research
- Communicated with Sponsors
- Collaborated with teammates
- Designed initial sketches
- Designed a few mid-fi screens
- Designed & assisted on finalized hi-fi screens.
- Conducted Likert scale testing on finalized mockups
Take a look at our final design video -->
Final Design/How it helps our user group
Our team found three major problems that many users face when using customization applications. We aimed to solve the following problems within our design.
The filtering options allows for the user to avoid a choice overload.
Reducing Choice Overload
The application acts as a helping guide through the customization process.
Helping Guide
The user has an augmented reality space available to them that is not overwhelming.
Augmented Reality
Our Process
Competitive Analysis
Interviews
Developing a Problem Statement
Secondary
Research
Ideation
Likert Scale Testing
Our team started this project with little knowledge about how to design a customization application. With this in mind, we started off with a competitive analysis to inform ourselves and each other about existing customization applications that use augmented reality.
Competitive Analysis
We conducted the competitive analysis on about seven applications. A few of these included Kavtek, Wayfair, and Magicplan. With these applications, each team member did the following with their designated application:
- explored an application.
- recorded the things we liked and disliked.
- reviewed the applications augmented reality setup.
From these bullet points, we came together and discussed the things we found. With this information, we compiled a list of reminders while designing UpHome's application. These are as followed:
- the content layout needed to be consistent and not overloaded.
- the application needed a learning process to aid users who are not familiar with customization applications as well as augmented reality.
Affinity Diagramming of our findings. (Conducted on Miro)
Since our team had acquired more information about customization applications, we moved onto interviewing several homeowners to understand their experiences with customization applications.
Interviews
Our team conducted interviews in order to better understand the current user experience with customization applications. We did the following:
Our team wanted to understand the needs and wants of our users.
From our interviews, we found the following to be issues that our interviewees had encountered while using a customization application in the past:
Many users struggle to customize when their is an abundance of options.
Choice Overload
Users get overwhelmed because there is no support or options for assistance.
Lack of Support
Many users do not understand how to use AR which ultimately leads them to disregard the application.
Lack of AR knowledge
With the information from both the competitive analysis and interviews, our team developed a problem statement.
Problem Statement
"First time Uphome customers need an experience that allows for a guided and exploratory way of customizing their showers."
This problem statement allowed for our team to move onto the secondary research. In order to cater to our problem statement, we decided to research more customization applications to look into the guided aspect.
Secondary Research
We researched a few applications (e.g. Bitmoji, Fifa, etc) to evaluate the guided aspect of the customization process. Our team found the following takeaways:
- bottom navigation bar is accessible.
- Augmented Reality shown in real time to allow the users to visualize their customization while they were shopping.
This research led our team to our ideation phase. We were able to take all that we had learned from the competitive analysis, interviews, and secondary research to begin designing.
Ideation
In order to get as many design ideas in front of us, our team took time to do a mass sketching exercise. This allowed each team member to express their ideas and then we came back together and discussed each one.
Once we had reviewed all of the sketches, our team chose the sketch to the right (along with ideas from other sketches), and moved into low fidelity mockups.
Designed in Whimsical
Evaluative Research
With the initial low fidelity mockups, our team conducted evaluative research in order to identify any functionality issues or confusion that users face when navigating through our prototypes. From our research, we found the following iterations to be necessary:
Make the filters on a separate page
Put the back and forward bottom in the bottom right
Show four products in a line on a minimized screen
Designed in Whimsical
With this medium fidelity design, our team moved on to high fidelity before testing.
Shopping Experience
Cart view
Homepage
With these high fidelity mockups, our team was able to conduct testing to see how effective these designs were.
Likert Scale Testing
Likert Scale testing is a rating scale used to assess opinions, attitudes, or behaviors. We used this method to measure task usability and attitudes/agreements associated with those tasks.
Measure task usability and attitudes/agreements associated with those tasks.
Our team tested with six people in our user group by asking questions related to likability while completing tasks within the app.
Our takeaways from the testing are as followed:
Change the UI of the menu
Add a save button in the top left corner
With these iterations from the testing, we finalized our design for the UpHome application.
Final Design
