Cognitive Walkthrough – Rapid Prototype – Journey Map
The Quick Read
Bella Scena is a Tech Start up under the Wonderly Software umbrella. They are currently in Beta testing for a cloud based calendar and meeting application that features scheduling a to-do list, taking meeting notes and assigning tasks that surface in the those meetings to team members.
The focus user with Bella Scena is soloprenuer and small business owning women. While the software is designed to be enjoyed by anyone is specifically centered on the female experience in the workplace, utilizing a majority of female testers and design input.
I was brought in to add delight features that help Bella with engagement, retaining user, and shareability. The following Case study showcases the user journey and several of those features.
DELIVERABLES
-
Journey Map
-
Annotated Wireframes
-
Axure RP Prototype (In Progress)
TOOLS & METHODS
-
Cognitive Walkthrough
-
Rapid Prototyping
-
Kano Survey
-
Tech Scoping
-
Dot Voting
The Full Story
THE ISSUE AT HAND
I was brought in as part of a team to look over Bella Scena for potential pain-points and growth opportunities. Bella is a project management software built with a small business owner in mind. During the UX review I went through a cognitive walkthrough with the stakeholder, learned what they saw as beneficial features and began to understand the story behind the software.
In digging deeper I found a program that is still in process. One that is built very much for a user that already understands what I had just learned from the designers. That begged the question, where could I make improvements that would draw in a first time user to the software. To make them feel at home within the platform without having to meet the designers one on one.
GOALS FOR UX REVIEW
-
Engage New Users
-
Retain Existing Users
-
Share with Potential Users
PROCESS
click to expand
The first step in moving forward was to understand a potential user. Taking the information given to me by the stakeholder I was able to give life to a persona named Sheryl. Sheryl, a small retail business owner with several part time employees was looking for a way to better manage the growing list of projects at her store. She would be the eyes I would follow through the rest of the design process.
With Sheryl in mind I walked through the website, taking notes on potential stumbling blocks. I starting designing and building a journey map that would show where pain-points and delighters might be present.
SKETCHED FEATURE ADD-0NS
As the journey became apparent that adding a few new features would bring Bella Scena that much closer to being ready for an official public launch. Below you can see how I started to sketch these ideas out on paper and interact with different possible user flows. As a team several of us put up our individual ideas for dot voting. Those went to the next step in the process
KANO ANALYSIS
With 11 sketches ready from a handful of designer we were ready to pick our persona’s favorites to bring to life via annotated wireframes and interactive prototypes. The Kano Survey highlighted what features were expected, which brought delight, which expanded the performance of the site and which need to head to the ice-box for the next round of ideas.
DIGITIZED ANNOTATED FEATURE WIREFRAMES
Features Ideated in the sketch phase by me:
Adding a Welcome Tour
Bella currently does not have a welcoming tour of features. Adding a few pop-ups over a faux calendar would allow users to see the features at a glance and feeling home immediately.
Where is my time?
This features adds a visual marker for where you have time to accomplish to-do items as they are dragged over the calendar.
Features ideated by other designers on my team and brought to digital form by me.
Task Complete Balloon
Here is a fun add-on to show what it would look like it completing tasks was rewarded with a little animation of a balloon floating away.
Meeting Overlap
This feature would have a toast notification showing when you are trying to schedule meeting and have a double booking or conflict at that time.
Personal Meeting Notes
Here I designed how it could look for individual meeting attendees to create their own personal notes during a meeting. Helping to keep coworkers on task by keeping them in the app during meetings.
Email Meeting Notes
In this final feature add-on for this sprint I prototyped how a meeting moderator could send out meeting notes to those who may have not been able to attend the meeting in person or online. Sharing the content helps bring in my users to the application and makes for a smoother work flow.
CONCLUSION
In a week long study and analysis of Bella Scena I found several opportunities to build better engagement, to retain more user and to share the app and content it hold with others. I look forward to seeing where the app goals in the coming years and how it evolves to better suit its user needs. Bella Scena is good and on it’s way to great.