Research Goal

To find out if Pottery Holder app can help users to accomplish recording details of work throughout each stage as well as ability to share the progress, work and inspirations.

Methodologies

Usability Studies

Pottery app users are looking for a digital diary to help keep track of pieces and document the process. Whether the piece is resting in the damp room or sitting on a shelf waiting to be fired, ceramists wish to record where they are in the process.

Competitive Analysis

Analyzing through three different free apps with similar features to identify major competitors and research the products. By doing this, I can create solid business strategies that improve upon the competitor's.

A competitive analysis helps me learn the ins and outs of how your competition works. It will also help with identifying what they're doing right and present opportunities where I can easily improve upon existing available products.

Frankie S. is an Interior Designer from Portland, OR. She has been making pottery for over 10 years and her specialty is making quirky-looking planters that are inspired by everyday objects. In small quantities she has been selling her work online and some local boutiques.

User Persona

Goals

• Keep a log of measurements and weight

• Able to share ideas, work, and inspirations

• Ability to record each stage of the ceramic

Pains

• Hard time replicate each piece

• Remembering type of glaze on a piece

• Lack of inspirations and ideas

Empathy Map

I decided to visualize my persona, Frankie, attitudes, and behaviors to help align on a deep understanding of the end-user. The mapping process also reveals any holes in existing user data. The mapping revealed Frankie’s need for recording her work to replicate later to sell consistently but also her pain in having trouble with finding inspirations. It gave a deeper understanding and comprehensible path for designing a product that can meet the needs of the targeted audience.

Product Map

Main benefit to creating a Product Map for Pottery Holder App is to give an overview of the product in a single glance. Giving a visual representation of the information space in order to understand where the users can go will offer a useful supplement to primary navigation features.

User Flow

With the help of the Product Map I came up with a scenario for Frankie.

Scenario

Frankie wants to start selling her work on Etsy and has been building a couple of core products. The problem is she is having a hard time remembering the details of each ceramic. She wants to be able to duplicate what she has made previously. She finds out about Potter Holder through some of the other members of her studio. She downloads it to keep a record of core pieces to sell, some of the other work that is in development and to get inspiration.

Wireframes

I skipped over the sign-up frames and just concentrated on the main components. I decided to concentrate on logging and a sharing/social feature so users can post, save ideas and share video tutorials..etc.

• Keep a log of measurements and weight

• Able to share ideas, work, and inspirations

UI Kit and Branding

While doing competitive analysis, I have noticed the existing pottery logging products in the market are not visually too exciting. My goal is to make sure the colors are relevant but also light, fun, and approachable. Hoping by using orange as the primary pop color to represent enthusiasm and creativity, the new product will invite users to share ideas and create a community.

Hi-Fi Prototype

Design Process
There are many types and varieties of ceramics used today. That means many different types of users might potentially need this product. I wanted to make sure I met the needs of persona to keep the focus on design process. The landing page was the most challenging since the two primary actions needed to be easily accessible yet aesthetically balanced. The bright color palette and minimalistic interface design are to help focus on the differences between the ‘Save’ and ‘Discover’ action.

The interface design of keeping a log of measurements, weight, and image(s) of ceramic work in the current stage. Individual entries are organized by boards and can either share a stage or the whole process from start to finish by sharing a board.

Another feature I added to this app was to have the ability to share work and create a community of artists. There is a bookmark ability to save others’ posts. The feed and bookmarks are easily accessible in the bottom navigation.

Usability Testing

Test Objectives

• To observe users direct and indirect path to completing the task

• To identify potential issues regarding primary action of recording notes with image/video/sketch

• To discover pain points and confusion when using the new product

Test Methodology
Maze usability testing to find out hot spots, success, and failure rates.

Participants

• 10 participants

  • 79% success rate in overall usability testing score

Findings

• Proceed of taking a photo and capturing notes of pottery creation

  • 80% Direct Success | 20% Indirect Success

    • There was 33% of high misclick due to confusion on the icon design

    • Photo editing panel seems to confuse the users and expect it to have a way to go forward to the next step within

• In testing of seeing if they can find an artist they follow, there was some confusion in the wording of “My Feed” & “My Featured Feed”

• The icon’s effectiveness is closely linked to how well it connects with its intended meaning and because most users are used to having heart or bookmark icon as saved, the star icon was not as effective

• The sketch icon on the left corner was a bit confusing

• The feed icon to discover work and finding saved work seems to create indirect paths to get to end the goal

Priority Revision

Updated the Navigation icons to be more recognizable since most of the tester had a hard time realizing its purpose. Instead of having just a plus icon for recording an image of the pottery piece, it is updated to a camera with a plus icon for a distinct direction. As for the ‘saved’ or ‘bookmarked’ icon, it was previously a star. Because a bookmark icon is more widely recognized, testers were confused by its objective and therefore was updated accordingly.

In testing of seeing if they can find an artist they follow, there was some confusion in the wording of “My Feed” & “My Featured Feed.” After some research and brainstorming, I came up with “Featured Feed” as a discovery path and “My Recent Work” as the users log path. In doing so hopefully creating a distinct separation between the two different routes.

Conclusion

All in all, it was pretty successful testing in finding the pain points and usability of the product. I have two actions I wanted to test on this app:

1) recording your pottery work and organizing them 2) saving or/and sharing them with a community of other ceramists My initial concern had to do with having two actions that will create a fair amount of friction and confusion. I try to solve the problem by separating all the primary actions and having them be omnipresent throughout the app. With the finding from the testing, I will continue to work on making updates to help better the usability of the product.