Paradise Gardens Wedding Services
Paradise Gardens is a hypothetical company created as a project in Google’s User Experience Certificate Program.
The company’s mission is to streamline the process of planning a wedding for couples getting married. The company’s mobile app aims to provide a personalized wedding planning experience via on-demand virtual wedding planner services.
The Problem
Engaged couples struggle with managing the various tasks associated with planning a wedding. Communication with wedding planners is disjointed and nonspecific to the chosen venue.
The Research
As an introductory project to the field of UX Design, the assignment provided sample biographies and called for mock interviews. As such, a certain level of assumptions were made given the lack of real-world research. Assumptions included customers’ needs for a more centralized application for help in planning weddings in the form of a tailored and personalized experience with varying degrees of assistance. Based on this information, various deliverables including user personas and user journey maps were created as part of the ideation process.
It should be noted that launching a real-world product would call for thorough research on users’ current experiences and pain points in the wedding planning process.
The Goal
The goal of this project is to provide an app that serves as an all-in-one experience for couples planning their wedding. On-demand and focused communication between couples and their wedding planner can be accomplished all within the mobile app.
Storyboarding
Based on current user pain points, the ideation process began with the construction of big-picture and close-up storyboards to better envision how to solve the problem.
Selection of paper wireframes
Low-fidelity Prototype
A low-fidelity prototype was then produced in preparation for the user testing phase.
Ideation
Big-picture Storyboard
Close-up Storyboard
Paper Wireframes
Next, paper wireframes were created to determine initial designs for the main user flow.
User Testing
Usability Studies
Two usability studies were conducted. In the first study, participants were presented with the low-fidelity prototype as well as a set of tasks and a system usability scale. In the second study, a refined, high-fidelity prototype and a system usability scale were presented to participants.
Parameters
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Participant Age Range: 32-65
Length: ~15 minutes each study
Type: In person, moderated
Refining the Design
Based on the usability study results, the following changes were implemented:
Review Booking Screen
Users expressed confusion regarding the overall process of booking a planner and how to begin using the app. An onboarding message was added to the home screen upon initial launching of the app to help orient users.
Users expressed frustrations with not knowing response times when booking specific planners within the app. The original contact icons were consolidated into one, resulting in a cleaner user interface.
A new overlay menu was added when users tap on the contact icon. More specific response times for each mode of communication were added to address user frustrations.
Selected Designs
Main User Flow
Payment and Contact Screen
Next Steps
The Paradise Gardens Wedding Services Company mobile app is a hypothetical company and product engineered for the purposes of UX design development through Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate Program. Thus, the product did not launch.
If the product company and product were legitimately launched, next steps would include additional research in the form of surveys, interviews, and usability studies. Information from these sources would be analyzed and utilized to inform design change decisions in future iterations of the app and website. Additional contact would continuously be made with members of the product team in order to ensure proper marketing and maintenance of the product.
Takeaways
This project helped refine both my technical skills as well as improve my understanding of the design process as a whole.
Technical Skills
Gained first exposure to using Figma as a design tool for wireframes, mockups, and prototypes.
Learned various basic level strategies within Figma to help streamline the design process and work at a more rapid pace.
Design Process Learnings
Gained first exposure to moving through the design process from end-to-end.
Learned how to conduct user research and usability studies.
Learned how to analyze user feedback into actionable insights to reiterate on and improve the design of the product.