DOTTERBOLAGET (Internship)

Produce research for the UI designer to improve user-friendliness for the target group of cultural coordinators, teachers and pedagogues.

RESEARCH

Competitive Analysis

I produced a competitive analysis of eight competitors which I analyzed based on their individual strengths, weaknesses and uniqueness. Once I had selected my competitors, I screenshotted their websites and went through each one. I analyzed their strengths, weaknesses and uniqueness based on ux, ui and text/copy.

Informal interviews

I conducted informal interviews with three people, a principal, a cultural coordinator and a teacher for students with special needs.

I came up with eight questions that I asked all three people.

1. How long have you worked as xxx?
2. When do you usually want to book theater performances?
3. How do you find shows?
4. How do you usually go about booking a performance?
5. What's the first thing you look for on a theater website?
6. What kind of information do you need about the show?
7. What is usually hard to find?
8. Something you think is missing?

These are the insights I gained from the interviews.

Brainstorming

I brainstormed images to give the UI designer inspiration for her work but also to be inspired and influenced myself before creating user journeys and storyboards.

Things I searched for:

• Signum in theater and clowning
• Presentation of masks
• Outdoor theater
• Colors and patterns connected to theater and clowns
• Light and darkness in connection with a scene

User Journeys

User journeys are a good tool for describing how a specific target group interacts with a product or service and an understanding of the entire user experience. It gives me a good basis for storyboards and concept sketches.

In this project I chose to develop three user journeys, one for cultural coordinators, teachers and principals and one for managers and one for private individuals. The reason I included more target groups was because it could benefit the customer to also start from managers as they are usually the ones who make the bookings themselves according to what came out during the interviews, but also to also target private individuals with children who want to be able to see or book a theatre show.

The pink notes are all interactions the user has with the website and the yellow notes are HMW questions linked to the specific part of the user journey and interaction.

CONCEPT SKETCHES

Storyboards

Storyboards are about telling a story to capture attention, create clarity and inspire creativity. A storyboard communicates a story through, in this case, eight image sequences chronologically based on the story's most important events.

I started from all the research I obtained during the course of the project and chose to make two storyboards, one based on a cultural coordinator and one based on a preschool teacher. I made a conscious choice to keep them simple with sketchy images to keep the focus on the content and not on the design and appearance.

Each storyboard had a persona, a scenario and eight image sequences supplemented with descriptive text. I also included emojis on one storyboard to bring out the emotional journey of the persona in each image sequence.

THE RESULT

When I was done with all the research, I went through it with UI designer Jenny Berg and described insights, what I found and how I thought about the research.

Interviews
The interviews provided interesting insights that would probably not have come to light until user tests otherwise. These are the major advantages of coordinating with the target group before starting the project.

Insights from the interviews:

• Bookings are often made via an external site in Stockholm
• Desires connection to curriculum
• Be able to watch video from the performance to form your own opinion,
• It should be easy to book
• It should be easy to contact the theater group
• There must be technical information,
• Important with the inclusion of children with different needs,
• It should be easy to find information about how the theater group can get to the school

The user journeys
Produce a clear flow that agreed with the customer's expectations and the target group's wishes by making it clear with ages and grades, including a calendar, being able to share the performance digitally, download documents, convey the themes of the performances and differentiate the offer for adults and children.

Storyboards
Storyboards provided a visual image of the user journeys that could give a better understanding to the UI designer when she designed the website the way I thought as a UX designer.

SOMTEHING TO TAKE FORWARD

User test the new website on the three target groups to further iterate on the user-friendliness.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED

The advantages of working together with a good UI designer who wants and can use the research I produced.

Fun project with a lot of playfulness and clarity from the customer.