Through market research, competitive analysis, and user interviews, I set out gain a deeper understanding of the market and Bread Corner’s customers. which enables me to dig deep into my understanding of the customers - not only their immediate frustrations, but also their hopes, fears, abilities, limitations, reasoning, and goals. It lays essential foundations for creating solutions in later stages.

To ensure the research stays on track and better guide design later, it is important to create a research plan before diving into the research phase. I listed research goals, research questions, assumptions, methodologies, participants, and timeline.

Using an empathy map, I synthesized all the information I gathered during the user interviews to uncover key insights that led to identifying target user group.

First, I started by categorizing my notes into the categories of Doing, Thinking-Feeling, Seeing, Hearing, Gains, and Pains to get an overall understanding of everything learned during my interviews with the different participants.

This helped me to uncover common patterns that led to key insights which would help me identify what our users’ needs truly are.

Through my research, I was able to get a clear picture of who the target users are and created a persona that would represent them through - meet Sarah. This persona continued to guide my decisions moving forward, making sure my design is centered on who our user Sarah is.

Before I could make any decisions on what kind of solutions we wanted to implement, I needed to have a clear understanding of the goals we are trying to meet. These goals would help guide the decisions made moving forward to ensure we are moving towards the right direction.

Taking the lo-fi wireframe sketches, I digitized them on Sketch and added just enough information for users to be able to navigate through the pages and complete tasks I would present to them during usability testing. These mid-fidelity wireframes would help my focus on what needed to be improved in terms of the functionality of my design. I also created tablet and mobile versions to make sure that the design is responsive and effective across the different device screens that users would be accessing the website on.

With my prototype completed, I started working on a test plan to guide the testing that would be conducted. I then recruited participants and conducted usability testing in order to see how users interact with my design and identify where improvements to the design can be made.

To get a better understanding of all the observations from testing, I used an affinity map to synthesize my findings. This helped me to get a better look at the different experiences users had and allowed draw connections and uncover key insights. These insights would help me identify what improvements would need to be made on our design to make sure we are helping our users painlessly meet their goals.

I explored a new approach for this project by testing mid-fidelity designs to put a focus more on the logical structure and design before finalizing the visual design. I think this method was really effective in quickly identifying initial roadblocks to our user’s goals in the design and to make sure that the overall layout of content itself is effective and functional.