DATA STRUCTURE & KEY VALUE PROPOSITIONS TANGIBILIZED.
PROJECT & TEAM
Joined this early stage startup for a few months to help with CX development, ontology and UX/UI consulting. This tiny lean founders' team's initial vision was to turn clothing and fashion data into insights which would help people make decisions about what to wear or buy, without advertising. UX challenge in this environment was to conceptualize a minimum viable product that would provide a peak into our closets and would help gather data about our clothing and purchasing habits in an engaging way.
WHAT I DID FOR ABETT
+ Reviewed competition's service offerings, features and marketing messages to help with positioning.
+ Interviewed stakeholders in person, consulted in survey designs for validation of business problem and assumptions about different directions
+ Helped determine MVP key value propositions, positioning and strategy.
+ Delivered key findings and initial concepts
+ Facilitated workshops and exercises on ideation, feature prioritization and determining MVP scope.
+ Turned product epics and features which the team prioritized into mobile app designs.
+ Prepared architecture/ flow documents and low fidelity UX prototypes to share with developer and iterated based on feedback from founding team. Our workflow included tools like Sketch, Slack and Realtime Board.
+ Proposed visual design and content needs for application. Consulted on UX and testing strategy, analytics, content strategy and feature iterations after launch of MVP.
+ Interviewed stakeholders in person, consulted in survey designs for validation of business problem and assumptions about different directions
+ Helped determine MVP key value propositions, positioning and strategy.
+ Delivered key findings and initial concepts
+ Facilitated workshops and exercises on ideation, feature prioritization and determining MVP scope.
+ Turned product epics and features which the team prioritized into mobile app designs.
+ Prepared architecture/ flow documents and low fidelity UX prototypes to share with developer and iterated based on feedback from founding team. Our workflow included tools like Sketch, Slack and Realtime Board.
+ Proposed visual design and content needs for application. Consulted on UX and testing strategy, analytics, content strategy and feature iterations after launch of MVP.
app concept illustrating features
DISCOVERY PHASE & DELIVERABLES
I started reviewing the competition and similar products, service offerings and their marketing messages. We also got out of the building and interviewed stakeholders. I consulted on survey designs in order to validate business problem and assumptions about few different directions. All of this helped determine MVP key value propositions, positioning and strategy.
One-on-one in depth interviews and survey results during the discovery phase pushed me to refine the problem definition or look at it from different perspectives... The major finding from this phase was that decision making is also a social process and this could be a great way to get people to engage and create the database that will serve them later on. So, I proposed crowdsourcing the decision making process. Deciding what to wear is a process with many parameters other than the current weather and what you have in your closet. There are social, emotional, economical, ethical and identity-personal brand aspects to the equation which makes up one's 'style', which doesn't fade like fashion imposed from outside. Play along, log if you like and socialize with a good sense of humor and the system will eventually learn with you, your friends and the community and figure it out from there. I proposed addressing two major profiles of users as design and test partners for an MVP and starting to learn with them.
concept & data structure
The next phase was to facilitate workshops and exercises on ideation, feature prioritization and determining MVP scope. I turned product epics and features into tangible design artifacts. I prepared workflows and prototypes to share with the developer and iterated on these, based on feedback from team. Artifacts were lean as we were a very small team. Our workflow included tools like Sketch, Slack and Realtime Board. You can see some of these visual artifacts below (with the exception of user stories in Excel sheets, which were not as fun and festive).
MVP epics, features and cheatsheet for competition / positioning
annotated first version of wireframes
architecture, workflows and screen mocks
high fidelity flows for each feature and user stories
responsive design updates to the website whose purpose and content was redefined
I then started proposing visual design and content needs for the application, consulted on UX and testing strategy, analytics, content strategy and feature iterations after launch of MVP. During downtime, I consulted on organizational structure and where UX fits in. And my work here was done...
