Bloomup
May- July 2023
Bloomup, an image consulting business, recognizes the need to establish a strong online presence in order to attract new clients and expand its reach in the digital era. With a focus on personal styling, wardrobe consulting, and lifestyle photography, Bloomup aims to utilize the power of a well designed website to showcase its expertise and services to a wider audience.
Problem
Bloomup, an image consulting business, lacks a website, limiting its online presence and preventing it from reaching a wider audience. This absence hinders the business’s ability to showcase services, provide essential information, generate leads, and establish a professional brand image. Developing a website is crucial to address these challenges and establish a strong online presence in the image consulting industry.
Background
Bloomup is a modern image consulting firm focused on empowering individuals to embrace their unique style and boost confidence. With a modern and elegant design and a soft color palette, Bloomup offers personalized and transformative experiences to clients worldwide. By understanding each client’s personality and aspirations, Bloomup curates tailored style solutions. The firm’s commitment to innovation and client satisfaction makes it a go-to destination for those seeking to bloom into their best selves.
Role
Lead UX/UI designer
Skills
- Figma
- Figma Jam
- Zoom
- Illustrator
- Maze
- Notion
- Miro
- Otter.ai
Process
- Empathize
- Define
- Design
- Illustrator
- Prototype
- Test
- Reflect
Primary Research
Primary research is the process of collecting firsthand data directly from the target audience. For Bloomup, the image consulting firm, primary research involves conducting interviews and surveys with potential clients to understand their preferences, pain points, and expectations regarding personal styling and image guidance. This valuable information helps Bloomup tailor their services and marketing strategies to meet clients’ specific needs, ensuring a more personalized and satisfying experience for their clientele.
Competitor analysis
Analyzing competitors’ websites and social media platforms can provide information about their services, pricing, customer feedback, and marketing strategies.
Insights
Through this competitive analysis, Bloomup gains insights into what sets it apart in the market. We will leverage our personalized approach, transparent pricing, and commitment to understanding our clients deeply as key differentiators. By addressing the identified weaknesses and capitalizing on the opportunities, we aim to position Bloomup as a frontrunner in the image consulting industry, offering tailored and transformative experiences to our valued clients.
Understanding the user
01 Empathize
Understanding the user is paramount in our approach at Bloomup. As an image consulting firm, we recognize that each client is unique, with their own distinct style preferences and aspirations. To provide the best possible experience, we invest time and effort in conducting in-depth research and gathering valuable insights about our target audience. Through interviews, surveys, and analyzing customer feedback, we gain a comprehensive understanding of their needs, pain points, and expectations. This deep level of understanding allows us to tailor our services, recommendations, and personalized styling advice to suit each client’s individual taste and lifestyle. By putting our clients at the center of everything we do, we ensure that Bloomup delivers exceptional and transformative image consulting services that empower our clients to feel confident and embrace their personal style with enthusiasm.
Research goal
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the preferences, needs, and expectations of potential clients in the image consulting industry, with a focus on their style aspirations, pain points, and preferences for personalized services. This research aims to inform the development of tailored and impactful image consulting offerings that resonate with our target audience, ultimately enhancing their confidence and style transformation journey.
Objectives
— Design a user centric website for Bloomup, an image consulting business, to enhance user experience
— Improve branding, facilitate clear communication of services, optimize conversion opportunities, and ensure mobile responsiveness.
— The goal is to create a visually appealing and user friendly website that engages potential clients and drives business growth for Bloomup.
Interviewees
Years old
Minutes interview
02 Define
Affinity map
This method is very helpful because it is Human centered design and it is crucial to hear from users in their own words. It is also a good way to learn about a person’s mindset, interests, emotions, behavior, and lifestyle when it is time to make a decision
Synthesis Debrief
After conducting interviews with 5 participants and collecting feedback from 13 surveys, I gathered valuable insights regarding image consulting services. By carefully listening to their thoughts, feelings, and pain points, I complied the information and identified recurring patterns to gain a deeper understanding of my target audience
I put similar pieces and grouped them into themes:
Feelings:
Participants in the research process might experience a mix of emotions, including excitement, curiosity, and the opportunity to contribute their opinions. They might also feel valued and heard as their perspectives are being sought to shape the development of image consulting services. Additionally, participants could experience a sense of satisfaction in sharing their fashion related experiences, frustrations, and aspirations, knowing that their input can potentially lead to more tailored and effective solutions.
Important things to consider:
- Image consulting firms can focus on offering competitive pricing and package options
- Users prefer to access information about image consulting services through well-designed and informative websites. They appreciate easy navigation, clear content, and the ability to explore services, pricing, and other relevant details.
- They value engaging and visually appealing content, including client testimonials, before and after photos, and styling tips shared on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
- They expect the website to be fully optimized and responsive across various mobile devices, ensuring a seamless and enjoyable browsing experience on the go.
What do they want:
- High quality imagery and visuals
- Elegant and Sophisticated Design and intuitive navigation
- Before and After Photos
- Engaging content on a weekly basis to stay inspired and informed about the latest fashion trends and styling ideas.
- Diversity and Inclusivity
Pain points:
- Lack of Personalized Recommendations
- Unclear Pricing or Service Packages
- Lack of Clear Contact Information
- Insufficient Details about Services Offered
- Lack of Transparency in Pricing or Fees
- Difficulty Understanding the Value or Benefits of Services
- Lack of Testimonials or Client Reviews
User Persona
User personas are essential for the success of the BloomUp image consulting project. They provide a focused understanding of the target audience’s preferences and pain points, enabling tailored service solutions that resonate on a personal level. Through empathetic insight into potential clients’ mindsets, personas guide decision-making, foster efficient communication among team members, and aid in solving specific challenges. These personas drive personalized user experiences, inform marketing strategies, and validate design choices. As the project evolves, user personas allow for continuous adaptation and optimization, ensuring that the services offered are not only effective but also deeply connected to the users’ needs, fostering stronger engagement and trust.
03 Ideate
How might we (HMW)
1
Help designers focus their design attention on opportunities
2
Respond to the needs and insights uncovered during the research
3
Generate targeted ideas.
Journey map
The function of a journey map, particularly in the context of Bloomup’s image consulting project, is to comprehensively illustrate the user’s entire experience from their initial encounter with the website to booking appointments. It offers a user-centric perspective, fostering empathy and understanding of user needs and challenges. By pinpointing pain points and uncovering opportunities for enhancement, the journey map guides the team in refining user interactions. This visualization fosters cross-functional alignment, aids iterative improvements, and serves as a communication tool for stakeholders. Ultimately, it empowers Bloomup’s team to create a seamless and empathetic user experience that aligns with the project’s goals and the users’ expectations.
Venn diagram
A Venn diagram is a visual representation that uses overlapping circles to depict the relationships between different sets of data. In the context of BloomUp’s image consulting project, a Venn diagram could illustrate the intersection of user goals, business objectives, and technical considerations. This depiction highlights the common ground where these aspects align, aiding in identifying priorities and guiding the design and development process. It offers a clear and concise way to showcase how these three dimensions interact, ensuring a well-balanced and effective approach that caters to both user needs and business goals.
Roadmap
I’ve meticulously developed this roadmap for Bloomup’s website to provide a structured view of our feature priorities. It classifies features into four distinct categories: Must Have Features, addressing core functionalities and user needs; Nice to Have Features, enhancing convenience and user satisfaction; Surprising and Delightful Features, designed to exceed expectations and bring innovation; and Features for Future Consideration, for ideas that await the right time. This roadmap not only showcases what’s in the pipeline but also reflects the commitment to delivering a balanced and evolving product that aligns with your needs and aspirations. It ensures a robust and reliable experience while fostering innovation and growth for the future, sparking joy and enthusiasm along the way
Site map
A site map for BloomUp’s image consulting website is a hierarchical representation that outlines the structure and organization of its web pages. This visual tool provides an overview of how content is arranged, showcasing main navigation categories such as Home, Services, Portfolio, About Us, and Contact. Each category branches into subpages, offering users a clear path to navigate through the website’s offerings and information. By visually depicting the site’s layout, the site map helps ensure intuitive user navigation and aids in efficient content creation and management, ultimately contributing to a user-friendly and organized online experience for visitors to the BloomUp website.
User flow and Task flow
A task flow might illustrate the precise steps a user takes to book an appointment on the website, while a user flow could depict the entire experience from first encountering the website to successfully booking an appointment, encompassing their emotions and interactions along the way. Both these visual tools aid in designing intuitive and user-centered experiences.
03 Design
The design process in UX/UI is like a creative adventure where we use technology to make digital things easy to use and beautiful. We start by thinking about what people need and then we draw and build to make those ideas real. It’s like putting together a puzzle, where each piece like buttons and pictures fits just right to create something that’s fun, helpful, and easy to understand.
Wireframes
Wireframes were incredibly beneficial in the Bloomup project as they served as the initial visual representation to conceptualize and validate ideas. They brought lucidity to the various stages of design, highlighting distinct concepts through basic shapes. One particularly advantageous feature of wireframing is its transient nature, emphasizing the significance of prioritizing key screens. In my case, I concentrated on crafting the “landing page” and “portfolio” screens, demonstrating the arrangement of essential components such as images, logos, navigation bars, and call-to-action buttons, accompanied by informative annotations. This approach facilitated a clear roadmap for the project’s design direction, allowing for iterative improvements in alignment with Bloomup’s objectives.
Low fidelity wireframes
Mid fidelity wireframes
Branding
Branding for Bloomup, the image consulting firm, encapsulates a harmonious blend of elegance and approachability. The brand’s visual identity radiates through soft yet sophisticated color palette, encompassing shades of grey, black, and white. This selection evokes a sense of modernity and professionalism while maintaining a warm and inviting ambiance. The logo, a graceful combination of sleek typography and subtle graphical elements, symbolizes the transformative nature of personal style enhancement. The brand’s voice and tone resonate with authenticity, offering a genuine connection to clients. In totality, Bloomup’s branding embodies the art of self-expression and the journey towards self-assured confidence.
Mood board and Style tile
High fidelity wireframes
Testing
To gauge the design’s effectiveness for BloomUp, I crafted a high-fidelity wireframe prototype using Figma. By engaging 3 participants in usability tests with 4 specific tasks, I gained valuable insights to refine the prototype and enhance user experience.
Tasks
1. First Impression
2. Learn about consultants
3 Explore portfolio and click on the first case
4 Explore services and imagine you are going to pay for the personal styling service
Through usability testing, we achieved a 100% completion rate, indicating that all participants successfully completed the assigned tasks. Additionally, we observed an 80% error free rate, with only minor errors occurring during app navigation. These findings highlight the overall effectiveness and usability of the app, while also indicating areas where minor improvements can be made to enhance the user experience.
Usability test results
Before proceeding to high fidelity mockups, I conducted a moderated usability study to test the prototype with five participants. The study involved having users perform various tasks to simulate the intended user flow. This step was crucial in evaluating the usability of the prototype and gathering valuable feedback.
RESULTS
100%
Users found the website user friendly, fresh, professional looking and gives a lot of credibility
50%
Users said the spacing was not congruent and some pictures were pixeled
80%
Users didn’t feel comfortable that after getting information about service, they had to pay for the service.
High priority revisions
Overall, the testing yielded positive outcomes as all users successfully completed the tasks. Feedback from the users highlighted the website’s refreshing and user-friendly nature, coupled with easy navigation. The distinct sections were particularly praised for their unique and professional appearance akin to a magazine layout. However, there were recommendations for improvement, notably in terms of spacing between elements and alternative methods for interacting with images. Some participants pointed out that certain images were too small and exhibited pixelation issues, which emerged as areas for enhancement.
Prototyping
As we progress into the prototyping phase for Bloomup, the excitement of witnessing our vision materialize is invigorating. Figma has emerged as our chosen platform for this stage, proving to be an invaluable asset. With its instinctive interface and robust capabilities, Figma empowers us to fashion interactive prototypes that effectively display the essential features and functionalities of Bloomup.
Employing Figma’s hotspots, we can replicate user interactions and collect pivotal feedback regarding the usability and efficacy of our design. This process not only allows us to scrutinize BloomUp’s functionality but also facilitates early adjustments in response to user insights. Observing the product evolve and come to life as we iterate and refine the prototype is immensely gratifying.
The prototyping phase in Figma not only serves as a visual embodiment of Bloomup but also presents an experiential avenue for testing and validation. This immersive experience enables us to assess user engagement and make astute decisions to amplify the product’s design and functionality. With each iteration, we progress closer to crafting an exceptional and user-centric solution with Bloomup.
Reflections and takeaways
Figma
In my Figma journey, I’ve harnessed the power of learning new tools and experimenting with creativity. Figma’s intuitive interface allowed me to visualize and refine Bloomup’s essence effectively. By simulating user interactions, I honed my design based on real insights, embracing feedback as a catalyst for progress. Figma transformed my ideas into a dynamic prototype, reaffirming its pivotal role in sculpting user centered experiences.
Designing
Navigating the design process brought both excitement and challenges. Balancing aesthetics and functionality, especially in crafting the right color palette and visual elements, required careful consideration. Ensuring a consistent and responsive design across various devices and screen sizes posed its complexities. Integrating user feedback while staying aligned with the project’s objectives demanded a delicate balance. Yet, these challenges fueled my determination to deliver a seamless, captivating, and user-centric image consulting platform.
Interviews
Securing participants for the interviews proved to be a noteworthy challenge. Identifying individuals who aligned with the target audience of BloomUp required extensive effort. Coordinating schedules that accommodated both the participants availability and the project timeline was a time consuming task. Despite these challenges, the dedication to ensure a diverse and representative pool of participants enhanced the credibility of my research and offered valuable insights into the preferences and expectations of potential users.
What is next
In the context of Bloomup, the upcoming steps involve developing high-fidelity mobile screens for the event plan creation and event proposal form flows. Additionally, it’s essential to revisit the product roadmap, incorporating the exciting feature concepts and potential future enhancements we’ve discussed.
Enhancements for Bloomup also encompass incorporating a user friendly calendar feature, enabling streamlined event scheduling and management. Integrating various other sections. Once all components are harmoniously integrated, the comprehensive website will be poised for launch. The iterative journey continues as we closely analyze user interactions and feedback, refining the user experience and optimizing any aspects that warrant enhancement. This process involves a collaborative effort among UX/UI designers, developers, and stakeholders, ensuring the final product elegantly aligns with the initial vision and aspirations.