Bella Scena
A friendly, supportive project management system that unifies to-do lists, meetings, and calendars.
Challenge
Increase Bella's level of user engagement and retention, as well as her sharability, while reflecting her helpful, human personality.
Solution
Several high-fidelity prototypes, researched and determined feasible to create, outlining useful and desirable functions.
Key Deliverables
Methods
Journey mapping
Rapid ideation
Affinity diagramming
Surveys
Kano analysis
Prototyping
Tools
Paper + pencil
Otter
Sketch
Axure
Phase 1 - Identify
stakeholder interview
My team started off with a stakeholder interview, where we were introduced to the client and her goals for Bella Scena, a project management system.
understand expectations
By taking notes and asking questions, I was able to get a sense for the client, understanding her priorities and expectations of my team.
Team exercises
To start things off, my team familiarized ourselves with each other. Essentially, we thoughtfully wrote down a few topics on post it notes to talk about, going over our general thought processes when stressed and how to knock each other out of it.
be mindful of each other
This was in order to prompt awareness, both in ourselves and of our teammates. By being more mindful of our differences and crisis points, we preemptively smoothed out team relations.
Note taking and Journey Mapping
Prep work done, I then immersed myself in the current site, learning Bella Scena’s ins and outs and creating a journey map that showcased an idealized course of events for a primary user.
find pain points
I familiarized myself with the site in order to find the gaps between what currently existed and what could exist, keeping in mind Bella’s goals.
Phase 2 - Prototype
Rapid ideation
Next, I rapidly ideated sketches for possible website features. Essentially, I listed ideas based on both the goals that the client had given us and gaps in function that I saw, then physically sketched out ideas as to how they could take form.
create new value
My goal was brainstorming features that might create new value, simply getting ideas out of my head and into a medium where they might be easily discussed.
Phase 3 - Evaluate
affinity diagramming with client
Having created several sketches, my team then worked with our client and a representative of their programming team to understand the feasibility of our ideas. Basically, we posted up our ideas on several whiteboards (using affinity diagramming to organize), which our client and the developer then went over.
clarify focus and feasibility
Given the development team had a limited budget of both time and money, this period of collaboration was able to clarify what features we UXers should focus on. Additionally, we were able to learn if a similar feature was already in production, or if our sketches needed clarification before further development would be possible.
prioritize features for feedback
Having talked with our client, it was then time to gather feedback from users themselves. So in order to decide which of the many potential features would benefit most from user feedback, we posted them up again and put it to a vote.
limited time and user focus
Before we invested any more time into these features, we wanted to judge their feasibility, if they were within the client’s budget of hours, and if they were likely to benefit from a survey. I also took the client’s reactions (such as of delight or hesitancy) into account. Additionally, narrowing down the number of features prevents overwhelming survey takers and increases the chance of its completion.
kano survey
Thus, within the boundaries of time and feasibility set by our client, we decided on eleven features to put into a Kano analysis survey, which we sent out to several primary users.
Get Concrete data
This was so as to get concrete data as to what users require, enjoy, don't care about, or actively dislike having in their to-do lists.
Phase 4 - prototype
Created Wireframes
With that data in mind, I chose, created, and annotated wireframes of potential features. From sketching in my sketchbook to digitizing the ideas in Sketch, I created a short report that details six potential features and why I chose them.
convey features to dev team
This was to visually convey a narrow focus for the development team in a two week sprint, while providing enough rational that the intent would not be lost in translation.
