UX Portfolio
Bridesquad
Bachelorette Party Planning Application
Bridesquad Cover
Overview
Scope of work
Challenge
Every year millions of women struggle to plan wedding-related events for many reasons. Some are not good planners, and some are overwhelmed by the decisions and choices they have to make.
Bridesquad offers users organizational tool, to collect information about events and trips in one place, and establish transparent communication within the group of bridesmaids.
Goal
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To understand the pain points of event planning
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To improve usability of the application
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Develop features that was not included in MVP
Opportunities
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Increase delightfulness of Bridesquad
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Improve information architecture
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Simplify complex functionality for selected features
Roles/Responsibilities
I was involved as UX designer during all stages of work.
The project was carried out by a team of four people.
Scope and Constraints
Our team was tasked with redesigning the existing Bridesquad app. The project contained research and design parts. In addition to the report and presentation, the group also produced a user interface specification document. The entire duration of the project was four weeks.
Approach
Our team had to deliver a new version of redesigned application. We worked close with the owner of Bridesquad during all stages of work to understand business needs and goals. We also performed our research to get a user perspective.
Research Phase
Goal of Research
Final research goal was to understand and summaries users needs during events planning. To achieve it ten women were selected through screener survey and interviewed by our team. Because Bridesquad already has working application, another goal was to determine deficiencies in existing product, to make a better version of application based on what was already achieved.
Research Techniques. Client Research.
Client
Our client is the owner of Bridesquad. Lisa started her business after struggling to plan her own wedding and bachelorette party for her best friend.
We had the first meeting with the client, the subsequent meeting and the final presentation during our period of work. We discussed all the main problems that our client would like to solve. This information helped us better understand the pain points during the study.
Business Analysis
For business analysis, our team used several methods: business model canvas, competitive matrix, feature analysis, and heuristic evaluation. These tools have helped us better understand the business and strategies of its direct competitors.
User Research
User
Our client described the main user as a bridesmaid or maid of honor who is in charge of planning bachelorette parties and events.
Screener Survey
The questionnaire was published using a Google survey. We have included six questions related to the topic and three additional contact questions. We have sent our survey to customer-provided contacts and people in our network who we believe qualify for this survey.
25 people took part in our survey, and 19 of them planned or are planning events related to the wedding. 74% of respondents have been involved in planning in the past five years, and 21% are in the process of planning. There are 9 people involved as bride, 13 bridesmaids. 63% of people used planning apps and other tools to organize events. 2 used Bach, 7 Zola, 9 Knot and 2 Bradesquad.
User Interviews
Ten women ages 25-35 were selected for the user interview. We made sure that they are from our target audience. People must have been involved in planning wedding events for the past five years. We selected an equal number of brides, maids of honor and bridesmaids for interviews to get a comprehensive opinion on the topic of planning.
Insights
I Statements provided a base tool to create solutions to problems within the app, but first must have been converted to Insights to better explain what exactly we have to keep in mind as we design new features or redesign existing ones.
Existing App
Usability Test
The purpose of testing was to determine the usability of an existing application. This is part of our research and the results have been used to suggest any changes that might be made to the Bridesquad app.
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Onboarding needs to be improved to ask important questions upfront.
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Need clearer steps for creating and inviting squad.
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Profile access and editing needs to be improved.
Synthesis
After user interviews, to structure information, team used affinity mapping to define I-statements. This process helped to form key insights for developing persona as a next step.
Persona
Persona Amber was created from data we extracted during synthesis. She represents our typical user and humanizes our design process. It helps to remind through the duration of the project who is the Bridesquad user. Constantly keeping user in mind makes a decision process easier for designers.
User Journey
Creating a graphic representation of persona Amber journey while she is planning a bachelorette party, helps to visualize pain points she faces on her way. Journey map additionally reflects changes in user emotional state. This analysis makes it clear for designers where they should make bigger improvements to simplify process of the journey.
Design
Initial research helped us to define a clear way of redesigning Bridesquad. We chosen to concentrate mostly on selected app features, like sign up process, wallet, calendar, group chat, and social shopping.
Product Principles
Product principles had to be defined before having a design studio and following user interface design steps.
Product principles include:
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Organization
Bridesquad seeks to aid users with the necessary tools to become and stay organized throughout the bridal and bachelorette process.
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Communication
Bridesquad makes consistent communication possible with the ability to prioritize and stress key information and promote transparency amongst all members of the squad.
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Community
Bridesquad creates a sense of community between bridal parties by incorporating social media posts from current and past squads to share their experiences and recommendations.
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Ease
Bridesquad provides a seamless process and delightful interface to its users to ensure the app simplifies planning all the important details.
Key Features:
Design Ideation
Design process took place after research part and started with communicating ideas through sketching between team members. Completing low fidelity wireframes created a clear vision for high fidelity mockups. Having two rounds of high fidelity versions testing created a clear path for application improvements.
Prototype
Usability Testing
We ran two usability tests with two proposed design iterations. Tests were performed with 10 people from our target category each. User feedback and behavioral observations during the test played a significant role in addressing application deficiencies and its further development. Overall we observed outstanding results through all tasks we tested. Some of the examples below.
Hi-Fi Mockup
High fidelity design had two versions. The first one was used for user testing and further development with improvements.
The first round of usability testing provided us with insights for the future development of a redesigned application. We tested ten people in our target audience with nine different tasks.
New iteration of creating your bridal group task helped us to achieve improved results. Some of the iterations include:
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Revised design aesthetics
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Added textual content
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We left two required fields plus added wallpaper feature
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And included edit option inside text bars
Another feature is to request squad vote were revised to improve usability results. Users were confused with the “Submit” button in the message preview window. The decision was to remove it. And it helped us to achieve a 100% success rate and other results were improved as well.
To fix deficiencies in “edit profile” functionality we enlarged “edit” buttons - like pencil and completion percent button. Its affected our success rate by 15%
The favorite testers feature is a reminder of a payment to people who still owe you.
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To define the bell as reminder we placed word “remind” under the bell icon
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We redesigned the “remind” function by adding reminder to message for sending confirmation.
And the last task we wanted to demonstrate is to book activities through the social page. Originally we wanted users to go to the social page directly but the task completion was always indirect because users preferred to select their destination first. We didn't want to change any behavioral patterns and for this reason we located Social explore page inside destinations window. And this brought us to 35% of increase of a success rate and 1 point higher in easiness rating.
Components Board
Next Steps
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Add details to in-app booking features to increase credibility so users are not hesitant to use the app to directly book activities.
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Develop the rewards system further to explain to the user how the rewards may be used and their dollar value equivalents.
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Add the ability to assign the role of bride within the squad.
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Build the e-commerce and social shopping to allow squads to purchase directly from the app their decor, gifts, and more.
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Create the ability to add squad members by mobile number directly rather than email.
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Planned transportation feature to be further developed to pull average costs of transportation options to be considered in the planning process.
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Several more rounds of usability testing for feedback and observations.
Closeout
We believe that application redesign will help Bridesquad to gain a bigger audience and to keep existing users staying loyal. Bridesquad is a valuable tool for wedding and bachelorette parties planners. And we want to make sure users have best experience possible with this tool.
During this project we applied UX Design principles to achieve great overall usability improvement.