Oyster Club

As a first milestone I had to find out how cultural differences will affect user behavior and what impact they will have on the user’s life cycle in the panel.

Based on the results, I defined the personas I referred to during the product development process. Each persona had a scenario that matched the realistic goal of user interaction with the application. For each persona, I focused on specific goals, frustrations, and motivations to interact that influenced the reason and way the application was used.

Based on previous findings, I identified the main problems I had to respond to when designing the application:

• credibility of the app collecting personal data,
• immediate help in case of a problem with profile creation,
• rapid involvement of new respondents in research,
• verification and recommendations of relevant respondents.

Thanks to this information, I was able to define the MVP and the critical path of the user.

I prepared a prototype for each iteration and added the elements and screens that were necessary to achieve the users‘ goals to see which worked best. I prepared everything in Figma, where I created an interactive LF, then HF, prototypes and tested user stories on several individuals.

Findings from the first round of HF testing:

• users want to be able to filter project offers according to their own interest,
• users welcomeda screen with the details of the project to which they are invited,
• users will appreciate the opportunity to try out the app before taking the time to fill out a profile.

Solutions:

• a filter has been added to the list of projects,
• in the profile, users can set their areas of interest – the corresponding research invitations will then be displayed to them as a priority,
• we’ve created test and sample content where the user can test the app and its features.

During the visual design of the application, the cultural differences between the European and South Asian markets became most apparent. South Asian culture is more symbolically focused and prefers very playful and expressive graphics at the expense of clarity. So during testing, I found out which colors, graphics and design pattern will be the most attractive and trustworthy for the end users.

Thanks to initial research and testing, we have been able to address the issue of ocean protection that resonates with community in Southeast Asia. We therefore decided to combine the visual of the application with the marine theme and at the same time we used the theme to support the credibility of the newly emerging brand.