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Role: UX Design - Information Architecture
Tools: Figma, Google Suite
The Inccubator
Redesigning a multi-cultural digital publishing and social networking site with a wide variety of content and features
Overview
The Incc. team was in the process of building their platform as they finished the details of their platform. The working idea was a social networking platform for entrepreneurs from minority communities - a place for underrepresented communities to build, connect, and communicate.
In its initial state, it was a confusing collage of features from competitive platforms built around the Incc’s published content and no purposeful organization.
Early in process we determined our role in providing that organization and structure to provide a foundation on which The Incc. team could build the rest of their ideas.
Goals
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Consolidate the wide variety of content and features into a single experience, instead of a hub of separate experiences.
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Determine a style and voice that fits the platform’s purpose from the perspective of the users and the Incc. team.
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Create a foundation of research and design for the Incc. team to build with as they continued to develop their ideas and platform.
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Provide guidance for the development of additional work-in-progress features that were outside of the scope of work.
Research Approach
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Competitive research for the features that are incorporated in the platform.
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Determine basic functionality and winning implementations.
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9 guided discussion through the site with beta testers, familiar with the project.
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Impressions of the platform and how they applied to the team's mission, something these users were familiar with.
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6 usability tests with new users, verbalizing their thought processes.
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First impressions of the current platform and how the features/functions play into the team's mission.
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Discussions with project stakeholders before and after conducting our research.
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Solidify our scope and plan of attack with our client.
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Findings
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Original layout was confusing and lacked a true focus.
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Features and functionality were easy to assume up front, but would get muddled as users continued through each additional content or feature.
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Branding and styling were competing against the features and proposed purpose of the platform.
Synthesis
Users were confused about the structure of the site and how the content was organized. They weren't sure where they would find content and were losing sight of the social aspect of posting to a feed.
A site map of the beta is shown below.
I decided to focus on the social aspect of the platform and build an experience that would involve the users, their content, and most importantly the exclusive cultural content. This would help users recognize the site’s identity and purpose.
Site map of the beta version of The Incc. platform.
Focus
I determined a focus for the site that spoke to the client's and personas' desires - connection and creation. It was important to connect with people and with cultures on the platform as well as create content to do that.
I reorganized and consolidated the main content, as shown in the diagrams below, in order to create an easy way to navigate and explore all of the created content as well as sharing and discussing that content and outside sources.
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Home page for a feed showing content shared by users and channels you follow
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A separate page for exploring all of the exclusive cultural content
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Individual pages for all of the content of each cultural channel
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A separate page for exploring all of the user-created content
Structure of the main social and content pages.
Reorganized structure of the main social content pages.
Redesign
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Organize the site structure, tying creator content and The Incc. published content together, and improve the main navigation to shape the total experience.
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Have The Incc. act as a creative channel who publishes content on your feed.
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Organize content by creator/cultural channel.
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Create an environment for casual use and professional/creative purposes.
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Restructure page layouts with purposeful content and features that are easy to use and easy to navigate to and from.
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Create a styling that aids in the new organization of content.
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Redesign the main pages for the Incc. platform - the homepage (a personal content dashboard), a profile page, cultural content page from The Incc., and a user-created content page.
User Landing Page
Points of concern
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The landing page left users confused as to what they were supposed to do on the site.
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There was a lot of content presented to them at once and it was not clear what that content was.
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The tone of the site and what kind of content was appropriate to post here was unclear.
Proposal
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Relocate the cultural content to it's own page and create a focus of connecting and sharing with others.
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Allow content creators to upload to their channels directly from the landing page - pics, videos, blogs.
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Create posts of published content from The Incc. as a special kind of subscription content on the feed.
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Clarify the tone of a post by introducing a more serious kind of casual post - discussions and posts.
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Allow easy access to the cultural channels users subscribe to - have it populate the content feed.
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Reduce clutter by introducing a 2 column layout.
Cultural Content Pages
Points of concern
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Content page is the landing page and content feed, creating confusion
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Navigating to different channels brought you to the same landing page with new content, creating confusion.
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Navigating to a new page to see each new piece of content for each channel became tedious.
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It was not immediately clear what type of content lived within each category, headings were unclear.
Proposal
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Relocate each cultural channel to it's own page and provide a single space for all of the types content to be explored by a user.
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Create a distinction between the channels that is visually appealing and exciting.
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Clarify the types of content.
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Create a page for all of the published cultural content to exist and be explored. Reorganizing content by topic as opposed to medium.
User Content Page
Points of concern
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Users shouldn't explore The Incc. content by medium, but rather by topic.
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Neither the creator or the content was presented in an interesting way.
Proposal
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Create a single space for all types of user created content for users to explore.
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Highlight creators and user created content to promote interaction within the platform.
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Profile Page
Points of concern
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The profile page was boring and had a lot of sections that could be left empty, taking up space.
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The profile page did not create an easy way to manage the content the user has created.
Proposal
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Condense the profile information into one section with tabs to filter through the content.
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Condense the users created or posted content into one section with tabs to filter by type.
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Create a visually appealing page to invite other users to learn about you and explore your content.
Prototype Walkthrough
Thinking Ahead
Thinking ahead for The Inccubator, I would think about the following:
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Designing the rest of the pages for the website to match the visual interest we've created in the prototype and to ensure there is no more clutter or confusion
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How the user is exposed to the cultural content created internally by The Inccubator is important for highlighting one of the main features that makes the site unique. We've proposed to have it posted in your feed as if The Inccubator is one of the people you follow
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There is more to be discussed about the points of interaction between users and the content they are sharing or viewing on the site
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Does each cultural channel have a discussion forum of some kind?
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Is it appropriate for users to post memes?
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What kind of comment threading should be available?
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There are several aspects of the site that could use gamification to entice user interaction
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Badges to show your involvement in sponsoring creators
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Badges to show your involvement on the website
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Badges to show your involvement in your community
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