Case Study: Open Studio
Project Overview
Open Studio is a community-oriented app for learning new creative skills. Schedule one-on-one calls with experts to get help and advice, or trade tips and ask questions in the community forums!
In-browser & mobile app
Timeline: July 2021 to February 2022
This is a case study for Open Studio, a project I created for an online UX course.
The prompt for the assignment: create an app that helps people connect with experts so they can ask for some kind of assistance.
Thinking about the topic, I thought it would be interesting to take it in a learning direction: how do people learn creative skills online, and when would they turn to someone else for help or advice?
To find out more about how people currently viewed this topic, I conducted multiple interviews with people, asking them about their experiences using apps to learn online and their approach to problem-solving. I also looked at other learning-related apps to conduct a competitive analysis.
Project Goals & Scope
Compiling this information together, I outlined the goals for the project: what problems are we trying to solve?
Problem Statement: Users need a way to connect with experienced creators because they want to learn new skills and get feedback directly from people who know those skills best.
We will know this to be true when we see the growth in-app of a thriving community made up of both advice-seekers and experts.
User Stories
The next step was to think about what people would be using this app to do. What kind of features would they need to accomplish their goals? To figure this out, I created a list of user stories related to specific app functions:
Personas
Gathering these user stories along with the info I gained from speaking to people about their personal experiences, I then created four personas who represented the range of people who might use an app like this. I tried to think of people who would be looking for advice (from total beginners to people with some experience learning new skills), and experts who would be giving out advice and critiques:
User Journey Maps
Keeping my personas in mind, I created a set of user journey maps to walk through pain points people might currently encounter while trying to get/give advice for learning a new creative skill:
User Flows
Next, after having a solid understanding of the current problem and the needs my personas had, I created user flows to map out the way people might navigate through three of the main planned features for the app:
Search for an expert and request a video call
Create a new forum post
Check call requests
Wireframes
With a solid plan laid out, I started to sketch low-fidelity paper wireframes, and then, developing those further, I created mid-fidelity wireframes in Figma:
User Testing (Mobile)
Building on these early designs, I created a clickable mobile prototype using high-fidelity wireframes that I tested with six individuals from my target audience – all participants either worked professionally in a creative career or were used to using apps online for work, learning, or recreation. Tests were conducted remotely on participants’ own computers:
Updates
Taking these results (as well as other feedback from peers) into consideration, I made several revisions to the mobile prototype in order to clean up the flows within the app:
Sitemap
This sitemap outlines the most recent high-fidelity prototype:
High-Fidelity Designs
These are the current high-fidelity designs. Overall, the most challenging (but also the most interesting!) part of the project was trying to understand how people expected to interact with experts and exchange information within the app. Much like the app’s goal of creating a thriving environment where people could share in creative ideas and learn new skills, I think the project is much stronger now thanks to the information gathered from user testing and feedback from the target audience.
Current Mobile Prototype
Current Desktop Prototype
Next Steps
Test desktop prototype and updated mobile prototype with a new batch of participants
Update designs based on feedback