Sio wants an easier and fully digitalized onboarding process for new gym members.
Welcome to Barter
Barter is a marketplace based within a mobile app. Users can buy and sell items in exchange for specific skills, tasks, and money.
As a marketplace there are many key issues that I have considered in my HCI design decisions. Mainly trust and convenience. From my research into the marketplace sector, I have deduced that these two factors will be the pillars of my design and ethos.
Trust
Connect and talk to other users before making a deal, a wholesome review system will give buyers and sellers alike a feeling of trust and safety when using the platform.
Guidelines
Strong community guidelines ensure a safe experience for our users. Transparency is also used to gain users trust.
Consistency
Consistency is used trough every screen to make the user feel at home.
My users were in the back of my mind with every pixel. Thanks to the user-centered design process I was able to make an app that my users would find useful.
My design process
wireframes
Wireframes allow me to try different design solutions fast. Below you can see some early designs of Barter.
Persona
Personas is a crucial part of user experience design, they allow me to simulate my user’s needs, goals, and frustrations. This information will allow me to make the app useful for the user at hand. Personas are based on user research.
Scenario and empathy map
Personas only scratches the surfaces when it comes to getting to know the users. We need more empathy for our users, this is the most powerful tool that I possess as a designer. Gaining more empathy can be done with scenarios and empathy maps. With more empathy we can start to understand our users pain points.
Experience map
Now that I have some empathy for this specific user, I try to understand his pain further, but more importantly, I try to solve the user’s pain. This can be done in many ways, but I chose to do so with an experience map. This map aims to see what my potential users would do, think and feel while achieving a goal when using the application.
User insight
After examining Jhonnys Journey it became apparent that he had two overall painpoints, I have also included solutions that could potentially ease his pain. User insight is essential when accumulating empathy for users.
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Johnny needs assurance
He needs feedback on the ads he is putting out to the platform, given his small time window.
I think by giving him some sort of way to see his own ad when its posted, will give him all the assurance he needs.
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Johnny needs reasons to trust
I believe that a strong and well laid out review system will help Johnny gain trust to barter and it`s community. Transparency and consistency will also be used in every screen to emphasize this.
Solving for pain
We have so far seen my users’ pain and frustrations; this step is all about making their journey to the task at hand easier and more enjoyable, this is done with design principles and rules. As always I offer a solution with every pain point that my users might have.
User flow
After identifying my users’ pain, and after having a protentional solution. I tend to wireframe the solution and step by step go through what I believe my user would do to reach their goal.
Prototyping and testing
The last step of my design process is prototyping and testing with my target audience. After testing I can see new pain points that might occur, with that in mind I can come up with solutions that mends their pain.
