Labrador
Date: Oct 2019 - Nov 2019
Time: 2 Months
Role: Product Design (user research + testing, designing, prototyping)
Team: 4 Product Marketers
Labrador is a personal lab partner-finder app for students. The app provides a centralized hub of detailed user profiles to facilitate in the search, evaluation, and selection of potential lab partners.
In this project, I worked with four SCBUS 123 students to create a mock, innovative product and draft its marketing plan for its first year on the market. From our individual difficulties with finding labmates, we decided to design a hypothetical app to meet our needs. I took the initiative to develop the design and product positioning of the application.
User Research & Competitor Analysis
To test our product feasibility, we surveyed 60 first year Science and Business students to better understand our target users’ experiences in selecting a lab partner.
To find the motivators behind their decision making process when choosing a lab partner, students were asked to rank the most desired qualities in a potential lab partner. The most important attributes were:
Friendliness
Cooperativity
Time management
We also gathered the following insights from the survey:
58.1% met their lab partner in the first lab
33.9% regret choosing their first lab partner
25.8% regret choosing their lab partner when met in the first lab
50% feel anxious, nervous, worried about attending their first lab
91.8% would like to understand qualities of a potential lab partner beforehand
Furthermore, to gauge Labrador’s strengths and weaknesses in entering the market, a competitive analysis was conducted against potential indirect competitors. According to interviewees, current alternatives to Labrador include: university services, such as UWFlow, and social apps, such as Tinder, LinkedIn, and Facebook Groups.
Key Pain Points
From surveys:
It's difficult to assess desired labmate qualities beforehand/during the first lab
Choosing potential lab partners on the first day can be a nerve-wrecking experience
From competitor analysis:
The desired information is not easily accessible/available using indirect competitor services; if available, time must be spent to parse through information
Users on indirect competitor apps do not have the same goals as target users
The takeaway is that there is insufficient information available to choose a lab partner during the first lab. If students want to connect with lab-partners beforehand, considerable time must be spent searching through irrelevant information. These two factors result in a discouraging first-lab experience.
Design Process
Design Principles
With these insights in consideration, the solution must:
Present relevant information of potential lab partners in an accessible and digestible manner
Guide users in evaluating labmate options; therefore, lessening anxiety experienced prior to attending first lab
User Flow
I first created a user flow to structure my design process.
Wireframes
Next, I sketched wireframes with components based on design principles and reiterated based on users.
Style Guide
I then made a style guide to aid in creating consistent designs and ultimately, add in the user experience. The colour palette mainly consists of three shades of greyscale: a slightly lighter tone of black, cloud grey, and pure white. Instead of pure black for the bulk of the text, I opted for a lighter tone of black to convey a warmer feeling. As this shade of black contrasted well with the white background, it also aided in readability of important information, while cloud grey was used to shift the focus off of supplementary information. Conversely, I chose royal blue to highlight actionable items and buttons in the pressed state. With its adequate letter-spacing, I chose Roboto as the font to even out whitespace and provide reading comfort.
Final Design
“How can we create a welcoming laboratory-onboarding-experience for
first-year Science students?”
With the design principles in focus, I created a high fidelity prototype using Figma.
“My Labs” - Centralized hubs for important lab information and chats
After completing their Labrador profile, users will be automatically placed into the appropriate lab group - eliminating the search for potential candidates.
In “Peers”, users can easily view profiles of their lab mates as well as the entire class list, and quickly determine who’s also looking for a partner.
In “Posts”, users can write and comment on posts to share information.
Guiding the users’ decision making process
The desired profile information is neatly displayed to help users get to know each other better and evaluate candidates that fit their criteria.
To enhance the user’s decision making process, detailed reviews and breakdowns can be accessed under “SEE ALL REVIEWS.”
No need to wait for your friend request to be accepted, just say hi!
Prototype
Finding a lab partner isn’t scary:
Closing Thoughts
I learned a lot about design and user research while working on. Taking on this role as a UX outsider/admirer, I had read countless Medium articles on UX design, but had no clue where to begin. It’s one thing to read about design principles and processes, but you really learn a lot more just by diving right in and applying what you learned.
Reviving a dead meme.
Here’s some things I learned along the way:
The need to define a solid problem statement. The lack of a clear problem statement was a large roadblock ahead of the design process. With the amount of insights gained through research, there were a lot of potential problems to address. These problems could be extrapolated to students taking labs in other faculties, but by 1. narrowing down our user group and 2. defining the problem, there was a better understanding in designing a solution.
The constant need for research and feedback. With the majority of my research done prior to designing, I missed the opportunity for conducting usability tests to validate my design. For example, A/B testing with different layouts could provide insights on feature discoverability - something I would improve in this case study and future projects.