Maker Space UX Designer

General Assembly UX Design - App Development

Problem: When wanting to plan a girls night out with a Make & Take business like “Painting with a Twist” or “Sip & Stain” you have to view multiple sites, multiple calendars, determine available space, and get all your friends on the same page.

Project: Maker Space is a native app that allows the users to find and reserve class space at “Make & Take” events near them. With clear and easy to understand class availability, pricing, and supplies list, as well as, a QUICK SHARE LINK, they can easily get friends to CLICK, PAY, AND RESERVE their spot.

We believe by providing this service we are supporting Local businesses, peoples desire to be more creative, streamline the reservation process, and help filling classes allowing our user to CRAFT new experience.

Interviews

Initially the initial interviews were not hitting the target market. I reevaluated the interview process and started to narrow down the target user. After conducting over 20 interviews, one being with a Make & Take business owner, we were able to to discover three key needs.

• As a business owner

  Last minute cancellations leave me with open seats and I need to get the word out quickly.

  By offering push notifications about open seats to users that have previous shown interested in attending the event, we can help them fill these events.

• As a user

  When looking for a Make & Take social event, I have to review several websites and calendars to find a space.

  By providing a creative focused social events app we allow the user to plug in their available calendar and present them with the top options for event around them. This creates a USER CENTERED APPROACH TO SCHEDULING, as well as helping the business fill open seats.

• As a user

  When my friends decide they want to take part in a maker event I just want to an easy way to pay. Have no interest in downloading another app.

  By giving the event organizer a QUICK SHARE LINK, they can easily get friends to CLICK, PAY, AND RESERVE THEIR SPOT.

Persona

When the interviews were complete the development of the following user types were created.

“Every thing’s better with friends and a little wine!” - Page

Wire Frames

penciling out many low fidelity wire frames to plan out the different page views.

After working on the low fidelity mock-ups it became clear that the layout and content were not going to be easy to read. I started to explore different layouts that would give strong visual clues about the class and then class information.

The personality begins to develop

Product

The results of the tested prototype was that users felt navigating through that app was easy and natural, the check out process was familiar, and the overall aesthetic was appealing.

Lessons Learned

To encourage users to continue using the app a rewards program should be implemented to provide discount classes once the users book a specific number of classes and group bookings. An on-boarding process would be useful to explain how the rewards are occur.