Light Finder - Mobile App
Challenge: Develop a mobile experience that help users discover the company's successful stories
Deliverables: User testing report. Persona. Site map. User flows. Sketches. UI. Prototype.
Role: Product Designer
Goals and Objectives
Develop a mobile experience to help the company share successful stories with customers.
Challenges
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Long lead time - The company is having a hard time to update customers with their latest and greatest installations because of long lead time of marketing content generation working with professional photographers;
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Connectivity - The company doesn't have a tool to effectively connect customers with successful stories;
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Lack of visual stories - The sales team desperately need visual stories to support and increase sales. Customers who are majority lighting designers, typically don't specify products without knowing how they perform in real projects.
Process
We started the process with user research to understand users' pain points, then analyzed our findings and defined core tasks of the product. We developed the concept into UI sketches and tested it with customers. It was then translated into hi-fi prototypes. I led the team throughout the design process, communicated milestones and presented works to get buy‐in from executives and the sales team.
RESEARCH
User Research and Key Findings
We connected with customers with support from the sales team, and conducted interviews to better understand the problem and uncover customer pain points.
Persona
After analyzing the key findings, I created a provisional persona to help communicate information collected about users through out the design process.
Ideation
Concept and Strategy
With a map based searching engine, customers can search projects by name, location, product types or browse projects by categories. To avoid long waiting period for the marketing content generation, Light Finder provide a platform where the company can add new projects (by assigned Admin) at anytime. Within every project, it shows project name, products being installed, ratings and reviews, locations, etc. It allows users to easily bookmark the project or save products they like.
Site Map & User Flows
To communicate the concept and information architecture, I generated site map, user flows and worked together with the team to nail down product frameworks.
Lo-Fi Sketches
I sketched multiple options for each screen, continually referencing the target audience, company mission and objectives to share successful stories with customers.
Base on the research findings, I prioritized three main objectives:
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Provide a platform that allows the company to quickly add new successful project stories;
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Provide a platform where users can find and share visual stories with each other easily;
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Provide a platform where users can find great project photos and products info efficiently.
Prototype
Hi-Fi Prototype
During this phase we iterated our design based on Lo-Fi validation findings. We learned that there were still some confusion around how to search per product types, bookmark projects or save products in the app. Therefore, we focused on improving the above while finalizing our UI design.
Validate
Conclusion
The company loved how we successfully addressed and resolved many of the existing pain points. We were excited to show the results of our Hi-Fi validation and have metrics to compare our success rates during the process.
Below is the results from our Hi-Fi validation:
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Reduced time cycle of posting successful stories from 6 months to 2 weeks
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Improved users' experience of finding project photos and product info
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Increased users' interactions with the products
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Optimized users' comprehension of product value
PROJECT EVOLUTION
Phase I – Media Database
Build a media database with project photos taken by the internal team. The database has grown to over 3,000 photos for more than 200 projects within a year. It serves as a system allows for keyword search by product name or project categories.
User: Sales team.
Feedback: Great resource to search project photos. A mix of different quality photos.
Phase II – Light Map
To open the valuable resource to more people, the media database was turned into a digital Light Map based on Google Map. It allows live search and direction to explore nearby projects, while showing project photos, listing designers and products on the job. Projects are represented in unique icons in the map with assigned categories such as museum, retail, urban, etc.
User: Rep agencies, sales team.
Feedback: Like the sharable link. Don't like it only works well on mobile device with the GoogleMap app installed.
Phase III – Light Finder
To make the Light Map easy to use on mobile device and open it up to more users especially lighting designers, I suggested to develop a native mobile app Light Finder. It provides a platform where the company can add new project stories at anytime, while customers can find great projects, products info, and easily share with others.
User: Lighting designers, rep agencies, sales team.
I have omitted confidential information in this case study to comply with my non-disclosure agreement. The information presented here is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of the company.