Overview

A digital platform to help visitors explore creative classes and attend useful events at Grounded Clay Studio.
Grounded Clay is a responsive website designed to help new visitors and existing members explore the resources, events, gallery shop and more!
My role
UX Designer, UX Researcher - Individual Project (MICA Grad Program)
Methods
Surveys, Competitive Audit, User Interviews, Personas, User Stories, Wireframing, Prototyping and Usability tests.
Design Toolkit
Pencil & Paper, Figma, Adobe XD, Mural, Miro
Duration
October 2022 - December 2022
Problem
Visitors have difficulty signing up for classes, finding events, and learning resources due to lack of accessibility. 
Design Challenge
How can we assist visitors in discovering classes, events and the gallery shop effectively and intuitively?
Design Process
How did I solve the problem?
User Research
Interviews revealed 3 visitor pain points

I conducted 5 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 ceramic studios. I then analyzed my users' answers by sorting them into an affinity map to gain overarching insights. The user research helped me confirm or revise my design opportunities and possible solutions. Through a synthesis, I was able to create a typical journey map of a visitor's experience and extracted visitors' 3 main pain points.

but also revealed areas of excitement that I could capitalize on to create an end-to-end visitor experience.
Competitive Analysis
Some existing products of the pain areas were addressed by existing solutions, but no single product was able to handle them all.

I investigated what services our competitors offered and how we might include features into our own website.

Mood board
Organic & Balanced

The mood boards prepped me to begin creating sketches with paper/pen and gave me a better visual of the overall application for sketches. Ceramics are made of clay and hardened by heat. Based on that idea, the mood board & color palette displays those themes.

Wireframes | lOW FIDELITY DESIGN
Visitors can sign up for classes, join events, shop, and explore learning resources to improve their visitor experience.

High fidelity design
Grounded Clay: A website that assists visitors in discovering classes and exploring events and learning resources in Grounded Clay's Catalog.

Navigate Grounded Clay's Studio

  • The home page showcases classes to provide a central place for a visitor to go when starting their visitor journey.
  • Visitors may choose classes, browse the gallery shop, and search for events to share their experience with others.
  • Visitors may find a main navigations menu that showcases "classes, gallery, events, about and account" page that has studio information, which includes official, up-to-date information on hours, events, and accessibility.

Selecting Engaging Classes

  • Allowing the visitors to select an various of classes for better flexibility and accessibility.
  • Search & Find private classes, instructors, and studio information.
  • Clicking on a class will allow them to view the classes' description, time and location, as well as utilize the search to find exactly what they are looking for.

Support Multiple Events For Visitors To RSVP

  • During events, visitors enjoy connecting with one another in order to deepen their connections to the ceramics community at Grounded Clay.
  • RSVP features allows visitors to sign up for events by entering their information.

Explore The Gallery Shop

  • Allowing the visitors to select an variety of items in the shop and add to cart
  • Find products by categories
  • Selecting a product will allow visitors to view the products description, shipping and return information on the product page
TESTING + iMPROVEMENTS
2 Major Improvements in my design

Based on various feedback from 4 participants I continually iterated my design over the span of 2 weeks - with 2 major improvements:

Switching the Events Page

  • Based on feedback, letting users rsvp on the same page without clicking to another page was a better idea
  • RSVP dropdown features allows visitors to sign up for events without leaving the page to another tab.

Additions to Classes Page

  • Originally designed the "Meet the team" section with shapes behind the instructor images
  • Based on feedback and testing, most participates wanted to naturally flow and continuous stroll down the page to find more studio information
Design Opportunities
How can I turn these pain points into design opportunities?
Sketches
Improving new pages based on the users pain points

When creating my sketches, I considered the mood boards and users pain points. On the home page I decided to go with full page bleed image that would take up the screen and reveal the navigation. I later realized that this solution doesn’t allow users to easily navigate between options. To address this issue, I incorporated section that reveals see all classes to choose from when visitors reach the home screen.

All of the components displayed during the design process have been blended to produce an engaging, effective, and inviting website.
The Final Screens

Final Product

Reflection | MAIN TAKEAWAY
Lessons Learned

I enjoyed bringing the design to life, while learning how to design an website that is helpful to its users. I'm grateful to have been thought the entire UX process. This is what I've learned: Overall, I was able to learn more about design and broadened my skills in UX research, Visual and UI design.

Thank you for reading!

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