Barn
Find accommodations for your horse
OVERVIEW
I designed a new app concept called Barn. The app’s goal is to help users find both short and long term accommodations for their horses, as well as find horse adventures and equine activities.
ROLE
UX Designer.
BUSINESS GOALS
Gain revenue from users who book accommodations from member’s venues. Gain revenue from members who host their venues on the platform.
USER PROBLEM
Users need a method to find and reserve accommodations for their horse. People also need a way to find and reserve horse adventures and equine activities.
SOLUTION
Design and implement a new app that helps users accomplish their goal of finding and reserving accommodations for their horse. Also help users host their space to gain revenue.
PROCESS
· Research user behaviors who need accommodations for their horse, and users who need to find renters to find their space.
· Competitive analysis and market research
· Design exploration and iterative design
· Prototype and test
TOOLS
Figma, Adobe Photoshop, pen & paper
PROJECT TIME
5 weeks
Design Process
With a focus on UX for this project, the steps I covered in my design process included personas, user flows, sketching, wireframing, and prototyping.
Define
I started the first step in my process by defining and answering the 5 W questions.
Inspiration & Research
I started the research and inspiration phase of my process by conducting market research and competitor analysis to better understand who my competitors were and what they did well or poorly. Competitor analysis and user stories helped determine the essential features the app would need to make it successful and useful.
Problem Statement & Solution
My findings revealed that there are only two other companies that help users find accommodations for horses: HorseBnB, and Horse Motels International.
Both companies apps and website have strengths and weaknesses. After reviewing each in detail, I felt that there was a great opportunity to create new, higher quality product with a much better user experience.
My findings also helped me shape my problem statement and possible solutions.
User Interviews
I conducted remote user interviews to gain a well-rounded understanding of my users’ needs, goals, and points of friction. I asked questions focused on users' experiences with renting accommodations for horses.
User research helped me confirm and revise possible solutions and user stories. Utilizing this information, I began to design the app with the following main functions:
Conceptualization
Using my findings from the inspiration phase, I created three user personas to represent user groups with different backgrounds and needs.
User Journeys & Flows
In addition to the personas, I also created a user journey and user flow for the app’s main functions. I wanted to understand how users would complete a function and what they would need to accomplish it.
Ideate: Wireframes
I first sketched low-fidelity wireframe ideations with pencil and paper. After I decided on the general layouts of the screens, I turned to Figma to create the mid-fidelity wireframes. Before starting the wireframing process, I decided to apply a 8-column grid to create an organized and consistent look throughout our screens.
Prototype
As a last step in the ideation phase, I used Figma to create a clickable prototype.
Usability Testing
After building several of the main pages, I wanted to get early user feedback. I prepared a simple remote usability test by creating a test plan for certain tasks:
1. Find and reserve short term accommodations for your horse.
2. Find and reserve long term accommodations for your horse.
3. Find and reserve an experience.
After analyzing the test results, a pain-point surfaced: some users were confused with the navigation system causing difficulty and frustration. With a small redesign, I reorganized and renamed some of the main items in the system, and made another round of tests. The new design solved the issue and allowed users to achieve their tasks and goals.
Peer Review
I asked peers from my professional network to conduct a peer review so that I could gain suggestions and comments for improvement of the Barn app. Asking other UX-minded people for critique helped me confirm or revise elements of my app, making the next iteration even better…
Updates included:
1) Update the map area to be interactive for users to drag to see more areas in the vicinity.
2) Build out more sections of the app to get a better feel of the experience.
*I continue to work to add more sections and features of the Barn app.
Final Mockups
Style Guide
Colors
With rich imagery driving the color of the barn app to engage users, I used grey tones, and white and black. With the logo being "Barn Red”, I pulled warm tones of orange, bright red, and red.
Icons
I used semi-bold, simple, universal icons combined with labels so users would easily understand their meaning.
Typography
For typography, I used Poppins for the Barn logo, giving is a rounded and semi playful feel. For all other text, I used Roboto, a san serif font to ensure crisp legibility.
Next Steps
As for next steps, I plan to add more sections, and conduct more usability tests to validate and solidify the concept. I will continue to test to see if and where there may be areas of improvement, as continuous iterations are an integral part of the design process.