IconBouquet%20logo@2x

Wedding communication app using Goal Directed Design

Role

Visual and Interaction Designer

Process

Goal Directed Design

Medium

Mobile App (Figma, XD)

Duration

Spring 2019 

Overview

This project was our created for our senior capstone project. We were given the most of the semester to compete the project and follow the Goal Directed Design approch through research, modeling, framework, refinement and testing. This project had its challenges but we came toghether as a team and created something great that left me with a deeper understanding of the design process

Challenges

1. Creating an app that targeted more than the traditional bride

2. Making a wedding app that focused on communication first

3. Designing a friendly onboarding process

4. Deciphering Brides/Grooms needs from interviews

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Team Overview

  • Members
    Parker Bomar - Lead Designer 
  • Katherine Turnipseed - Visual Designer
  • Blake Sheffield  - Research and Documentation 
  • Lindsay Blankenbeker  - Research and UX
My Role

Created idea and lead team through checkpoints

Worked as a group on Wireframes in Figma

Visual and Interaction design for high-fidelity prototype in XD

Interpreted data to solve user problems

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Research

 Competitive Analysis - Literature Review - Interviews

“As much as you want this to be your special day, it’s still very much a community event.”

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Competitive Analysis 

When attempting to make a product in a competitive and potentially saturated market its important to do a strong analysis of the competition. We looked at both Android and iOS as well as online sites to see what they looked like, how they performed and the features they offered. 

zola logo

www.zola.com

Position: App and Site

Services: Website, Registry, Booking, Invites

Strengths:  one stop shop that helps with entire wedding planning process

Weakness: Registry Focused, no group planning 

the knot-logo

www.theknot.com

Position: App and Site

Services: Planning, Vendor exploring, Website

Strengths:  Well known for its Vendor list and suggestions

Weakness: Lack of collaboration, No contact with vendors

wedding wire-logo

www.weddingwire.com

Position: App and Site

Services: Planning, Vendor management, Website, Invites
Strengths:  Great To Do list

Weakness: Only Guests you add to list can RSVP

pintrest logo

www.pintrest.com

Position: App and Site

Services: Vendor Exploration and image browser

Strengths:  Large userbase and lots of photos, Share things with friends accounts. 

Weakness: No planning, or any traditional wedding features

Literature Review

To better understand what questions to ask and gain a better undertanding of the topic at hand, we conducted a literature review through online searches, research studies and articles. We found three main themes that helped us form our questions and find the direction for the project.  To finish, we wrote a summary of our literature review to have qualitative data to refer back to.

Find the Summary on Page 6 

Interviews

We split up as a group and each recruited people so that we could diversify our candidates as much as possible.  To conduct the interviews we came up with open ended questions based on information from our analysis and reviews, and followed up with more questions to keep the participants talking and allowing us to learn more about their situations. When possible, we asked the participants to elaborate on the issues they had with the current services on the market and probed to find things that could improve their experience.  We gathered data through Audio recordings, and had a second group member observing and taking jottings. 

Interview Talking Points

How long have you been planning for?

What was the most stressful part of the wedding for you?

How do you find information on caterers, florists, venues, etc.?

How big is your wedding party?

How involved are your friends and family in your wedding?

How long was your engagement before you started planning?

How involved is your fiance in the wedding planning?

Do you use any kind of wedding website to display information about your weddingto your wedding guests?

How do you organize your wedding party communications?

How did you find inspiration for your wedding?

What type of venue is your wedding going to be held at?

Thick Description Example

Participant #1 is a female in her mid- twenties planning her first wedding. She has been planning her wedding for roughly a year and is very involved with the wedding planning herself. Her fiancé is involved in the wedding but only when he is given tasks to-do by the bride.

She is very family oriented, and concerned about making her bridal party, which consists of only family, all happy, while still giving herself the wedding she wants. She is using the internet to find the services she needs to plan her wedding.  She currently uses zola.com to display wedding information to her guests. She isn’t entirely sure what the theme of her wedding will be and isn’t quite sure what it means to have a wedding “theme.”

She and her fiancé will be having a destination wedding ideally at a restaurant in Italy but are still working on the actual details of the venue. Her goal is to have a close-knit family wedding in a destination location where everyone will be content and happy with the decisions made.

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Modeling

Data Analysis - Affinity Mapping - Personas

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Affinity map-1

Affinity Mapping

Here we gathered the information into different categories to try and best make sense of the data we consumed.  We experimented with different organization methods such as by intereview, topic, and question to look at the data in different ways. Once we saw a pattern, we narrowed in and focused on it. From there we saw reoccurring topics; Communication, Budget, and Planning. 

Data Analysis and Direction Shift

Based on the information we recived from the first interviews, we had realized we needed more data and we went back to the drawing board to create a better interview process that included more conversation and open ended questions that allowed for better data. Using this data and the affinity mapping we peformed to analyze this data we concluded that our orignal direction of a Poll/survey centered wedding app needed to be expanded. From the conclusions we drew we decided the correct path was a communication centered app that allowed the wedding party to work together to plan the wedding. 

Personas (Users)

We created Fictional Users that are based on data gathered and interviews. We developed two personas that would be users of Bouquet for their wedding. Creating these users allowed us to better visualize our direciton and have something to keep in mind while planning and designing the next process. 

Primary Persona
  • Sarah Norman
    Age: 26
    Budget: $25,000
    “As much as you want this to be your special day, it’s still very much a community event"
  • Goals:
    1. Plan and coordinate to make sure her wedding is the best it can be.
    2. She needs to satisfy expectations of a myriad of different guests.

  • Tasks: 
    1. Communicate and collect info on wedding, vendors and guests
    2. Schedule meetings and appointments
    3. User her network to find options

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Secondary Persona
  • Eric Stewart
    Age: 22 
    Budget: $12,000
    “I just communicated through group messages, even though we hate all the notifications. "
  • Goals:
    1. Plan and coordinate wedding
    2. An event that makes his family and friends proud

  • Tasks:
    1. Communicate and collect info on wedding, vendors and guests
    2. Schedule meetings and appointments
    3. Find the best options for his budget

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Framework

Brainstorming - Scenarios  - Visuals

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Brainstorming

Brainstorming and Form factor is a time to think about how we wanted the functions we planed on including to be grouped and organized. This was the opportunity to plan the information hierarchy, interaction, and layout. 

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Scenarios 

We created scenarios (simple short stories about the user) to help us better understand the tasks the user might be performing and the situations they would be in. These scenarios included context scenarios and keypath scnarios which showed the normal set of tasks the users might perform. 


Visuals
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Prototype

Wireframe  - Iteration - Interactive Prototype

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WireFrame

We created and experimented with a wireframe in Figma because of the ability to collaborate live in one space remotely. Once we were satisfied and received decent feedback from testing we moved over to Adobe XD because of its ability to create higher fidelity prototypes and animation transitions. 

XD wireframe

Testing & Iterations 

As we gained more knowledge from our research our vision for the app went through many changes. Starting off with a dark theme to contrast and standout in the saturated market, we found that our users preferred a more traditional look. We then experimented with layout and colors until testing led us to having customizable colors that match the wedding theme. From there we focused on having a layout with easy discoverabilty and signifiers.

Early Vision
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During Testing
Settings
Final Design
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Prototyping and Refinement

This is the part of the project where it all comes together. We spent a long time carefully refining, testing and making small changes to make the final prototype as perfect as we could.  

We focused on having a solid onboarding experience based on user feedback and designed solid visuals for that process so the user could easily see and read what the app was all about.  

Click through the prototype and feel free to take a look at our design in depth. 

Final Thoughts

"Bouquet."  taught us so much about teamwork and listening to our data. We were able to narrow down our design and really create something beautiful when we came together, analyzed our data, and came up with a plan. 

I really enjoyed doing the visuals and interaction design for the project. It was quite a challenge experimenting with so many different styles and changing directions, but the end result was worth it and I learned a ton about the iterative design process.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out!