UX Design – Zara Knox

Introduction

When deciding on a topic for my Major Project website, I was encouraged to choose a theme that aligned with my interests. This is why I chose to make a website based around resin craft; it is an engrossing, creative subject that is relatively easy to fit around my studies. However, while my own involvement in the craft is a fine starting point, it should by all means not be the end point in terms of how I approach the website’s content and functionality.

As the user experience consulting firm Neil Nelson Group points out, it is important to remember that “you are not the user,” no matter how involved with the product’s subject matter the designer might be. To assume that my users share my beliefs and behaviour simply because I also make resin would create a false-consensus effect that overestimates the similarity between would-be users and myself. Just as harmful would be any ideas on my part that only those vastly different to myself would make decisions different to my own. Ultimately, one cannot solve user problems without getting to know the user first.

It is integral, then, to implement a user-centred approach to the planning of my website. This should focus on the user through all stages of development, from planning to the end product. The user should be involved in each stage of the design process where possible to inform any decisions I make.

When deciding on an approach to user research and implementing UX principles, it is important to note that there is no ‘standard’ set of steps to follow, as many organisations have slightly different steps and methodologies when working with users. However, they share essential components, such as user research, problem definition, and an iterative process where it might be necessary to retrace steps if ideas transpire to be flawed, or most importantly, if a user problem is not solved. My steps, adapted from the UX Design Institute, recent workshops taken with user-centred designers Chris How and Steph Troeth, and Adobe’s educational materials on the subject, may serve as a guiding process and are broken down as follows:

Product Definition

In order to define what a product might consist of, designers must first scope the lay of the land in terms of their chosen subject. When building any product, it is important to understand what Adobe refers to as “its context for existence.” I would also add to this that designers must justify the product’s existence in the first place. My own justification for a website on resin craft was largely borne from my research for my Major Project’s Business and Cultural Context Crit Session, where I established a correlation between crafts and mental health benefits. As I had also discovered that many UK citizens do not feel they have much free time, I decided to focus on resin craft due to its relative time-efficiency.

Before doing any initial brainstorming of my own, my first approach to roughly defining my website was to look at the existing market. Researching cognate sites helped me identify potential problems that users might face early on. For example, tutorials were often time-consuming, which would not be helpful to busy users.

During this product definition research stage, it is also possible to gain a rough idea of the demographics of potential users. In the case of crafting statistics, I learned that the most likely target audience would be women aged 35-44, although this age range is decreasing over time.

The few existing resin craft websites are often vendors of materials, and their tutorials’ links to product pages mean that there is a monetary motive behind their existence. Tutorials and courses are often long and overly technical, which may put off some new to the craft suffering from time constraints, or simply looking for a new hobby or therapeutic outlet. Youtube tutorials are often meandering with unclear instructions. As such, I decided my initial product definition would be a website that:

is concise and informative
is primarily aimed at women
is not looking to ‘sell’ anything

At this stage, I was aware that the context and justification for the website might change as my research develops, and that the early product definition was just a starting guideline.

2. Research

In her User Research Fundamentals workshop, Troeth stressed the importance of thinking about real people. However, as resin is a fairly obscure craft, I did not think it would be beneficial to conduct in-person research with my immediate peer groups. I decided that the best way to progress with my research would be to look at online communities that share an interest in resin craft.

After roughly defining my website, I set out some research objectives in order to gain a sense of how my website could add value and solve the user’s problems. I did this by drafting some ‘W’ questions:

Why did the user start working with resin?

What does the user find frustrating about the medium?

How does the user respond to resin-related content online?

In her presentation, Troeth also discusses the craft of questions, and emphasised Erika Hall’s assertion that the designer must know what decisions questions will inform before they are asked. I knew that the questions I asked would influence my website’s content, as well as help me understand the user further. I chose to post on a Reddit forum that focused on resin craft, asking the community why they started working with resin, and what put them off learning. Through identifying myself as a novice crafter, I could identify my own frustrations as a means of encouraging the community to share their own stories.

To gain additional insight into users’ needs and problems, I gathered user comments from several resin tutorials on Youtube. For this task I made sure to select from a mix of content aimed at beginners and more experienced crafters to see if there would be any commonalities, as I do not want my website to exclude potential users based on experience level.

As I progress in my research I may choose to conduct individual interviews online with participants from the Reddit community. These would consist of open-ended questions (why? when? how?) to find out more about their behaviour and needs. As some of the responses I received to my initial Reddit post were sensitive and quite personal in nature, I would take interview ethics into consideration and remind participants that they can stop the interview at any time.

3. Analysis

My research enabled me to begin the process of moving from “what” users say to thinking more deeply about “why” they say it. Through the detailed responses I received in the r/resin community, I learned what inspired people to take up the craft, as well as what their pain points were from the Youtube tutorials. As a lot of the responses were quite in depth and revealed a lot about the participants’ characters and motivations, I was able to begin the process of visualising my findings. My next task was to therefore create user personas that will serve as realistic representations of my target audience for reference. I was able to create four user groups, each with different circumstances, goals, and frustrations.

From the user profiles I was able to construct an empathy map to build a fuller understanding of my potential audience. By examining their feelings, overall goals, influences, and pains, I can begin the process of defining the problem to solve.

User stories are also a valuable tool for establishing why users want to achieve certain goals. They may take the form of a simple persona → need → purpose sentence as follows:

As a { user role / persona }

I need to { do what I need to do }

in order to { accomplish goal }

Essentially, user stories can help designers boil down their users’ motives to a ‘truth’ that must always be taken into account when designing. Another effective empathy technique is to create job stories, where the designer steps into the user’s shoes to provide additional context to their situation:

When {situation}

I want to {motivation}

so that I can {expected outcome}

From here, it is possible to begin defining the problem that needs to be solved. I can look at the various issues the user groups might face and determine how best to tackle them.

4. Synthesis & Design

Having analysed my findings and drawn conclusions from it, I will next need to begin the process of synthesising it into the design and content of my website. There are many ideation techniques, but one particularly effective starting method proposed by Chris How is to brainstorm ‘The Worst Idea Possible.’ For example, if my Group A user’s pain point is that online tutorials are often overly-complicated and inaccessible for beginners, then I might propose a long series of video tutorials with ridiculously difficult quizzes at the end of each module. By pointing out what would not work, I can then begin to form ideas for what the user actually needs.

It is at this stage that I would form a list of “How might we…” questions based on the user pain points. For the above pain point, for example, my question might be phrased as:

“How might we make sure tutorials on the website are clear and easy for busy people to follow?”

Having decided which content should be included, I would then create possible UI Flow sketches to begin visualising the information architecture and user journey. While doing this, I will consult pattern libraries to see if there are any potential UI problems I can address before I begin wireframing and prototyping with Figma. For example, some of my users suffer from time constraints, and as such they should be able to find the content they need quickly and effortlessly. It is at this point I will begin to narrow down what Andy Clarke refers to as “design atmosphere” concepts, and create style tiles and element collages that offer glimpses of my planned colour, type, and other interface elements.

It is crucial to develop a timeline for my content creation as soon as possible. Establishing the right tone for it early on will therefore be beneficial. I noted that the warm, welcoming tone of the Reddit community was very useful to myself as a beginner of resin craft who might otherwise feel daunted; I plan to use a similar tone in my own content. In the interest of connecting with users and presenting a human, genuine tone, I therefore plan to only use images and content created by myself as opposed to stock images, as well as meaningful copy that users can relate to.

5. Validation

Once the prototyping stage has begun, I will begin testing the usability of an early version of the website. Early on, I will use the ‘eat your own dog food’ UX concept by navigating the site on a range of devices to help build empathy for users, who will most likely view the site in a variety of ways. I will then ask course peers to participate in usability studies to collect both quantitive and qualitative data, being sure to define goals through questions such as:

Is the content easy to understand?

Can the user complete a given task effectively?

Users will be given tasks to perform, such as “Find a jewellery tutorial” or “Look up safety guidelines.” Participants will not be given clues on how to do these. Ideally this would take place in a moderated setting and be in-person, as further cues such as body language and mood can be picked up on. Users will be asked to provide qualitative feedback through an open-ended question interview after the test.

I will also create a survey for members of the Reddit community to complete once they have been given the chance to view the site prototype. Questions will be close-ended in order to obtain quantitive user opinions on specific website features. This remote testing has the added advantage of allowing users to interact with the website in their own environments; the context in which the website is intended to be used. I also plan to explore analytics tools to gain further insight into how users interact with the site.

Conclusion

As my research continues to progress and prototyping begins, it is essential to remember that all design ideas are little more than assumptions until they are tested with real people. Whether these people are seasoned resin creators or new to the craft, I should listen to any feedback given and use it to strengthen my website’s design. Once this design is completed and it is time to pitch it, it is my job to find the story of the work by expressing what the problem is, and exactly how my website solves it.