PrintCraft Hub: Merging Innovation, Crafting, and Community.
Design Lead
TEAM
PM, Front-end Engineer, SWE, Marketing
THE CORE EXPERIENCE
TIMELINE
Summer 2022 - Spring 2023
Building a craft community supporting work, social, and personal growth.
PROJECT CONTEXT
Pathloom is an agile startup company building for outdoor hikers and campers optimized travel experiences. Pathloom app allows users to discover travel destinations, plan trips, and engage in outdoor communities. As a UX design intern, I was responsible for 2 feature designs under supervision of CEO and design lead.
ROLE
TOOLS
Figma, Miro, Confluence, Canva
Printmakers is a niche community that suffers from poor features and usability of their current craft app.
I conducted 8 interviews and collected 326 responses to posted questionnaire, aiming to understand current pain points, real user needs, and user characteristics.
Key findings from user research include:
Beginners suffer more: beginner printmakers report they had rough times when they first started learning to make prints, due to inaccessibility of resources and overpriced materials.
Social needs are strong but unmet: printmakers value their communities and a lot of them actively reach out to make friends, post works, and form groups. The current app does not fulfill these needs and they have to seek alternative support.
Crafting tools are outdated: current tool kits are basic and have usability issues. They are not able to support efficient and complex craft designs.
Identifying problems in the current app:
They did well:
Provide a core feature to help users piece pictures and connect edges with lines, which is 85% of the reason users stayed.
They did poorly:
Poor usability, lack of content regulation, lack of hierarchy.
Envisioning an integrated platform with advanced tools, achievement records, and community building.
Based on research analysis and user flows, I listed core features and designed the initial information architecture:
Information architecture:
Feature ideations:
I listed out the product requirements, and explored different layouts and structures of key screens of the app, including Dashboard, Social Plaza, Materials screens.
I also explored User Profile, Post, Feed screens.
Which feature should be prioritized? What goes on the homepage? I asked users.
User testing takeaways:
User path of finding image materials was not intuitive enough, resulting in longer navigation time;
Group printmaking is a high frequency action, requiring the feature placed in a more prominent location;
The tool box should not hinder other user actions, therefore replacing the popup design.
A design system denoting creativity and innovation.
KEY FEATURE
Reach activities and tools with one click.
Users are fed with latest posts and activities on landing page.
They are able to reach the tool bar and start working at any point by Tools.
KEY FEATURE
Easy access to printmaking resources.
Octopus highlights and provides easy access to key resources for printmakers.
Discover section navigates to images, tutorials, Q&As, and markets. Groups section helps with group printmaking.
KEY FEATURE
Record stories and connect with friends
Octopus allows users to chat with friends, new connections, and groups.
Every user has their own page to showcase their interests, experiences, and stories.
The End. Redirecting you to…
Architecture AI
Funsport Education
Travel Navigation