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Project OneEleven

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Overview

       Problem: 

OneEleven's online presence is inadequate to serve as a virtual information hub for its existing community and to attract potential customers.

​

       Solution:

To strengthen its online presence, we successfully elevated its website by

  • improving its visual and layout, fixing its IA structure, optimizing its application workflow

  • and implemented new functionalities including an interactive map of OneEleven's space, an event calendar, an event detail tab and a booking page.

       My Role:

  • Core Concept Founder

  • Team Facilitator

  • Conduct Interviews & Usability Testing

  • Prototype Studio & Evaluation Lead

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Client:

       OneEleven

  • Julia Lee - Digital Community Associate

Platform:

       Website design

Sector:

​       Tech Start-up

01 Discovery

Preliminary Evaluation 

We apply Nielson's 10 Heuristics Principles to the current website and found several issues that undermine the user experience of the OneEleven website. Severity ratings are from 1 to 5, 1 being the mildest and 5 being the most critical.

A competitive analysis is conducted

  • 8 incubator service providers in the market are analyzed

Key findings:

  • Most of the sites contain powerful catchphrases that describe the companies’ services and values

  • It’s important to use language that speaks to the users

  • We should avoid displaying lengthy paragraphs on the website

OneEleven Competitior Analysis

02 User Research

Next Step: Connect with the users!

Through secondary research and heuristic evaluation, we gained a preliminary understanding of the sector OneEleven is in and the challenges it is facing. Next, we embarked on using research to understand the issues through users' lenses. 

Research Sessions:

  • A session of interview 

    • length: 5 minutes​

  • A session of usability tests​

    • Two Tasks

    • Length: 5 minutes​

  • A session of short post-test interview

    • Length: 2 minutes​

​Participants

  • Inclusive Criteria

    • start-up founders​

    • current members of OneElven

    • have experience with incubator services

​​

  • Number of participants: 4

    • start-up founders are hard to come by, so we made the most out of the participants we enlisted

We converted the gathered data into themes and organized them into an affinity diagram.

  • I encouraged the team to hold a data analysis studio in-person, so that we could exchange ideas better and smooth the process.

  • It proves that the offline environment is more effective in exchanging thoughts and generating ideas

Based on the processed data, we draw out our persona and current state user experience map for OneEleven.

Meet Fred the Founder:

Persona: Fred the Founder

For HD file, please click here

Using Frank as the focal point, we pictured a typical journey users will experience on the OneEleven website.

OneEleven Current State Experience Map

For HD file, please click here

It looks like Fred is not having the best of his time with OneEleven's website, and OneEleven is missing out on a prime member candidate. How can we address and solve this undesirable situation?

03 Ideation

How Can We Help?

First, to better understand how users interact with OneEleven, we used the gathered data both from users and from meetings with our stakeholder to devise a value proposition canvas.

Now that we have everything, we brainstorm and proposed our ideas for addressing OneEleven's challenges. To decide which of our ideas are feasible and impactful, we voted on them and organize the ideas on a prioritization grid.

Home Run Ideas:

Proposed by me:

  • Floor plan - showcasing OneElevn's 55,000 square-foot space

Proposed by team:

  • Member page reorganized - adding filter and sortation function

Quick Wins, Big Bets, and Tough Choices

Proposed by me:

  • 3D tour - a visual representation of OneEleven's physical space

  • A new slogan and landing screen - better represent OneEleven's value at first glance

Proposed by team:

  • Member page reorganized - adding filter and sortation function

  • A new event page - showcasing OneEleven's ongoing events

  • Highlight the eligibility criteria - smooth the application process

We optimized the website's IA and introducing a new site map:


Experience map - Completed

OneEleven Experience Map - Completed

For HD file, please click here

04 Prototype

Putting Everything into Figma

First, using the ideas we generated from our ideation, we each hand-drew sketches for different section designs on the website.​

Then we held a team meeting to vote on the sketches to implement in our high-fidelity design

Design System:

As we had our first draft prototype, we conducted a series of usability tests and made several changes based on the feedback we gathered.

Participants:

  • Number: 5 (Anonymized)​

  • Wide range of backgrounds

  • Knowledgable about the start-up sector

Usability Test Format:

  • Task-based (5 tasks)

  • Think-aloud Protocol

  • Environment: Zoom

Key changes:

based on the test results

  • Highlight the eligibility criteria for application on the homepage for users' effective recognition of their application qualification 

  • A floor map of OneEleven to demonstrate the featured multifunctional space

  • Add search, filter, and detailed information of each member, and change the layout of the page

  • Redo the event page, adding functions including event list, event calendar and event detail

  • Optimize the overall steps of the application and shorten the steps from 10 to 5 without cutting out the necessary information

And at last, we present OneEleven's

High Fidelity Prototype

1. First-time user on the website:

  • Optimized information flow on the home page

  • Highlighting the core value OneEleven represents including its physical space, upscaling programs, and the start-up community it hosts

  • Enhanced visibility of eligibility criteria and application portal

  • Interactive map introduced, a new responsive way to showcase OneEleven's prime physical space

*hover to play

2. Community and member:

  • Organized information structure on the community page

  • Recreated member tabs that provide concise information at a glance

  • Filter and search function added, allowing users to browse desired members effectively

*hover to play

3. Event Browsing and Booking:

  • Introduced two view options - calendar and list to provide freedom for users to browse events

  • Detail information is now presented in a pop-up window

  • Booking an event is now integrated under the event browsing section

*hover to play

4. Application:

  • Application is now more concise to encourage the process completion rate

  • Applicants have the option to validate the eligibility criteria check before diving too deep into the process

  • A status bar is added to the top, helping users to keep track of the steps and their progress

*hover to play

Fully Clickable Prototype

05 Next Steps & Reflection

Next Steps:

  1. More Usability Tests

    • 5-6 participants recruited by the client

    • Collect data and generate insights

  2. Improve Prototype

    • Improve the prototype with applicable user suggestions, if needed​

  3. Final Delivery

    • Hand down the final version of High-Fidelity Prototype to the web developer

Lessons learned

Communication is the key of everything

Throughout this project, I managed to cultivate a mutual and collaborative rapport with our stakeholder, which greatly benefited us in numerous ways. We successfully identified OneEleven's requirements and goals, consistently obtained timely input from our stakeholder, and adeptly communicated the implemented changes.

Be ready for unexpected changes

​We were set on implementing a virtual 3-D tour for the website. However, even though it was my idea, I soon recognized the potential for extended loading times, the insufficiency in our design efforts, and a slight hesitation from our stakeholder during the initial idea presentation. Although crafting the interactive floorplan posed its challenges, I remain convinced of its value, as we've now given OneEleven a choice between two options for their consideration.

Suitable users for research are hard to come by sometimes, but necessary

Our target audience for this project is start-up founders, a cohort known for being engrossed in demanding schedules. Locating fitting participants for our research posed a persistent challenge throughout the project. Hence, we exhaustively explored every avenue and pursued various strategies in our quest to identify suitable users willing to engage in our study.

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