Welcome to my UX design portfolio!
In early 2019, I was approached to work on a new mobile phone application called “Exceptional Moments”. This application would be used for booking restaurant reservations online. In the research and planning stage of creating this application, “Directed Storytelling” sessions were held with 3 potential users. From the stories these users told, I came to the conclusion that the user of this app was booking a reservation for a special night or event. They need this app to assure them that their reservation will be honored at the restaurant. But, they don’t need this app to offer too many other features. The idea was to build an easy to use, restaurant reservation application that sends the user feedback verifying the restaurant received their reservation request.
From research to prototyping…
Created wireframe sketches to map out the overall design of the app.
After the initial round of research was complete, it was time to move into the prototyping phase of the project. I started by creating sketches of potential layouts for every screen in the application. These sketches helped me understand how a user would move from screen to screen within the app. Once all of this was mapped out on paper, it was time to transfer my sketches to a digital format.
Using the program Sketch, I digitally recreated the wireframes previously sketched out on paper. The digitized wireframes helped me plan a final layout for the applications navigation and menus. These digitized wireframes also helped map out a final screen flow for the application.
The sketched wireframes were recreated digitally. Details and features of the app were added to the digital wireframes. The digital wireframes were used to layout the overall screen flow of the app.
A working prototype of the app was built digitally for eventual testing with real users.
Design, Build, Test and repeat…
The next step was to build a working prototype of the application digitally. For this, I used a program called Axure. Once the prototype was complete, usability tests were scheduled with four different potential users of the application.
Screens from the Exceptional Moments prototype
At the usability tests, these users were asked to complete a series of specific tasks using my application prototype. This initial round of usability testing provided some positives results. Most of the users easily navigated the application and completed the tasks that were asked of them. The feedback from the usability tests also uncovered some issues with my designs navigation that I needed to rethink for the second build of the application. For best results, build it, test it and repeat!
Usability testing was conducted with 4 different people, given specific tasks to accomplish using the prototype of my app.