Sage & Grace
UI/UX Design
September 2016 - December 2016
Project
Sponsored by the University of Michigan's Design Clinic, I worked in a design team to develop a hi-fi prototype for Sage & Grace, a startup aiming to make funeral planning more accessible and transparent. My role as Designer 2 was to contribute my design knowledge and assist the Team Lead in managing our team's design process.
1. Research
The team conducted 6 user interviews and 60 surveys. Both were designed to help us understand the present challenges in funeral planning in different contexts.
The team was also made up of people who hadn't personally planned a funeral before. In order to overcome this shortcoming, we conducted background research and competitor analysis on the funeral industry as well.
I helped construct the questions for both, and conducted 2 interviews.
2. Synthesis
With the data we had gathered from the Research stage, we constructed an affinity wall, which helped us identify a guiding goal. Then we developed 2 personas and a storyboard to help us familiarize ourselves with the emotional touchpoints of our product.
Project Goal, distilled from our affinity wall:
Find a trustworthy and simple way to help novices conquer the complexity in finding a suitable funeral home.
3. Prototypes & Testing (Iteration)
The final two steps of our design process was iterative, with the team designing paper prototypes and returning to our initial interviewees for feedback. We also had our fellow Design Clinic designers as well as our design mentor give us feedback through clinic presentations.
One challenge we discovered during this process was the sheer variety of potential use cases for our product. In order to improve and streamline our user experience, we returned to the whiteboard(literally) to re-organize and prioritize use cases and motivations.
3. Final Prototype
We created our final interactive prototype in InVision, and delivered it to our client following a public presentation and critique.
Welcome page:
Reflects research showing the importance of proximity in finding funeral homes
Search results page:
Price is a barometer of measuring what is "average" or "socially acceptable" for people- we added a clear visualization of average prices.
Funeral home details:
People look towards funeral home directors to guide them through the process; we placed their picture prominently on the page.
Comparison page:
Novices especially desired an intuitive tool to guide them to make the best decision. We devised icons to make the information simpler.