This exercise would help us identify the next step in the phase - structure - which we would then look towards using a card sorting study with our primary personas.

After conducting user interviews, ideation sessions with our team, and card sorting excersies with our participants, we landed on a mental model we thought captured the questions and actions our primary user would have. This helped us shape our understanding as to how our primary user interacts with a mobile site used for purchasing product and what information about rental instruments they would need before the purchase.

The Site Map

In order to build a system to support novice and semi-experienced musicians, we want to find out how these users have been supported and not supported through other online rental websites.

A competitive review was conducted to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors and have a basic understanding of where Rental Instrument, LLC falls within the market.

Our Criteria Included...
Instrument catalog organization • Mechanisms for sharing product looks • Price placement • Sales person contact • Showing the user journey • Flexible navigation of site • Caretaking content strategies

From our competitive analysis, we found out what works, what doesn’t work, and, most importantly, what we learned.

What worked was the personalization starting from event-driven goals, at home try-outs of products to ensure fit for users, selections of pictures showing customers using a product and achieving end/life goals, and use of second person pronouns.

What did not work was the account sign up necessary to move through product selection and research, lack of filtering on catalog pages, and lack of customization.

We learned that our website needs to create affordances letting the user browse flexibly, get rid of unnecessary account registration, let the user identify his or her situation, and extend the personalization outside of the digital experience with a product to “test-drive”.

After finalizing out analysis of direct and indirect competitors, we were finally able to move on to the design fifelity phases.

When moving into the skeleton of the new website, we wanted to start with an approach that would let the mind run wild with ideas based on the previous research we conducted. Our group put pen to paper to conduct our fist phase pf prototyping - the low fidelity.

Purely just black ink on legal, we split up the designs into 5 tasks that we believed were essential to the website - rentals, account signup/login, membership selection, trade-in, and returns.

In this activity, our paper prototypes needed to be strong enough to conduct a usability test we would run before moving on to the next phase in fidelity. We saw through paper prototyping we could provide a large enough quantity of mobile layouts that eventually we would find a quality product.

Once we pulled out screens together that we thought were appropriate based on our user research & competitive analysis, we moved on into the next step within the skeleton phase - medium fidelity.

Although this was still boxes and lorem ipsum text, we were starting to see just how our product would live in its proposed environment - on a mobile phone. This was another point where we were synthesizing our research. We provided a loyalty program sign up based on experience of the user - this would provide a customized experience for those who sign up at different levels. We took out any unnecessary account sign up tasks that would impede our user from browsing. Most of all, we made sure our mobile site acted as a familiar e-commerce website our users would be used to.

After organizing our content on the necessary screens, we pulled our medium-fidelity design into InVision for proper prototyping. This method would also help us test real users and ensure our idea was sound or consider other problems within the design.

Creating A Design System

Our chosen design system was influenced by the soft, muted colors of instruments and the inviting feel our user needed based off of our user research. Each of us within our group decided to figure out our own design system to pitch. This was the most difficult part as bias comes in. Each group member wanted their own design system implemented or "frankenstein-ed" with the chosen design system. This was extremely troublesome since design systems live on their own and not in conjunction with others. Otherwise, each system would contain elements that clearly did not look like they belonged. Our team got over this point by choosing the system that was set up with components, organized, and made logical sense based off of our competitive analysis and primary persona.

High-Fidelity Solution

With our scope agreed upon and design system chosen, it was time to create the final edition of our product. We applied our design system to the medium fidelity wireframes to deliver our final solution.

Our Solution

Based off of all of our research, we came up with a solution that looked professional, trustworthy, and provided an informative experience to users who were looking for instruments to rent regardless of their skill or experience level in music. Since our primary persona was mothers, our experience needed to be trust worthy and transparent - parents need more information to decide how to educate their children.

Our final delivery was through a prototype that was able to be interacted with. This gave the stakeholders and users an expectation of just how the mobile site would function after our work on the project. On presenting it to the team, it had a mix of satisfactory reactions. Although the mobile website was able to perform how it was needed, the design wasn't quite above the bar when comparing it to competitors with more interactive, dynamic micro-interactions. Knowing this, our next step needs to take an agile framework through the surface phase until we reach a more agreeable solution. Our team will conduct another competitive analysis, learn the latest trends for mobile sites, and undergo a heuristic study to discuss the product in more detail.

Personally, I would like to go back and conduct more research on color, find out what other users within our persona are doing to learn more about renting instruments and follow them on their journey as they choose an instrument to rent for their child. With the design system, I would like to experiment with different color schemes that would make the instruments in "pop" more on the surface instead of blending in with the backgrounds and other colors we have chosen. I would also test out the readability of our typographic choices. As much as we believe it fits the vibe of our vision, I think there are better choices out there for type as headers.

Conclusion

On a team, I was able to work with our team, organize calendars, and ensure we met expectations from our client on what we needed to deliver. I took a product through the lifecycle to completion - I know now more of what it takes to complete such a project through research, design, and collaboration. Is this product finished? No. Iteration will prevail as a way to ensure our product and Rental Instruments remains a competitive music rental website.