Creatively Yours

Event management app

Client - Personal project

Project Duration- 2 months

Role - UX Designer

Research Tools used - Figma

Creatively Yours is an event planning application to help solve some of the difficulties that arise with users when planning events. While most of the apps are focused on bigger events, Creatively Yours focuses on small events and also finding vendors within your budget.

Problem

After my research on event planning I found out that users didn’t have a platform where they could find vendors and also have them chat or message them and coordinate events. Lots would get lost in texts as per the users. Another concern addressed was budgeting and the lack of vendors within the user's budget.

Goals

For users to communicate effectively with the vendors and also stay in touch with the vendors on one messaging feature. I would also handle the issue of vendors on a single platform, as well as finding them within a reasonable price.

Methodology

The methods I used were:

Competitive analysis- I feel that studying the competition and learning from them will give us more to work with and we can address the problems better.

Interviews- Interacting and talking to people and getting their opinion is what is needed for an event planning app. With this method I would know directly what the users are struggling with.

User Interviews

I was able to interview 5 people for my research and based on that these were my findings:

• Participants use cell phones for coordinating and arranging parties so an app would be for small budget parties and people who don’t hire party planners.

• The app needs to have a budget feature that will keep the users in check to be within the budget and alert them.

Then came the Affinity mapping. It helped me in grouping related items together and labeling these groups to help later in problem solving.

User Personas

Next based on all the data collected I created two user persona’s which help us empathize with users and create user centric solutions. I think creating a user persona gave me a perspective of what a user wants and I could relate to them with their likes and interests. Here I made two persona’s for Prashant and Nikita and they gave a lot of view points with my project.

User and Task Flows

To understand the process from the users perspective I created the user flows and task flows to help understand what the users will go through in the app. User flows helped me get an idea of what the users would want to see and how and what each step should look like for them. I created a User flow for Log In which is obviously very important to get into the application as that would be the users first step. Then I created a user flow for sending a message to the vendor and also one for Budget planning as those items were my main focus for the application. Then came the task flow which gave me a step by step visualization of the sign up process and sending a message to the vendor. It basically showed me what will happen on the app during the process and gives us an idea of if the process is smooth or not.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

This was my favorite portion since it was now that we could unleash our imaginations and sketch our ideas on paper. I think these wireframes allowed me to quickly explore different layouts and feature options for the app without getting bogged down in details. Also I feel like changing and modifying anything is so much quicker on paper. I think I must have used so much paper while creating this as in a party planning app the options are vast. But eventually following are the screens I came up with for the app thatI decided to use.

Mid Fidelity Wireframes

After Sketching I moved to the Mid Fidelity wireframes which serve as a gap between the low Fidelity and the high fidelity prototype.I feel like the purpose of mid-fi wireframes is to give us a clear picture of the layout.These wireframes below allowed me to refine the layout that I sketched , it gave some structure, and functionality of the party planning app with more precision compared to low-fidelity sketches. I made some minor changes in the design as some wireframes looked good on paper but on the screen.

Design Process

Design methodology

After getting the Mid-Fi frames it is time to get together a UI Library that reflects the app. It is important to look appealing to the users and they would love to use the app. They should be able to trust the app and also it should be easy for them to plan the process. The font ,colors, logo all should be catchy and easy to read.

Another thing that helped in high fidelity designs were mood boards.Mood boards gave an idea of colors, typography and how to brand an item. Mood boards I felt serve as a visual roadmap that guides the design process and it sets the stage for creativity.

High Fidelity Wireframes

After creating brand values, a logo, and product styling,a high fidelity wireframe was created for   Creatively Yours which enhanced the user experience.

High-fidelity wireframes are often used in the later stages of the design process, once the design concept has been refined and key decisions have been made. They provide a clearer and more realistic view of the UI compared to low or mid-fidelity wireframes, allowing designers and stakeholders to make more informed decisions and move closer to the implementation phase. This was a little time consuming as selecting pictures is not easy that takes some time and then when I added the colors to the whole design some combinations didn’t look as good with the pictures but eventually it all came together and Creatively Yours is fun and creative.

Testing

After having some users test the screens and inform me what needed to be added or removed I created the prototype and after adding a few more screens it was time to test my prototypes with users to get an idea of all the pain points and receive feedback. The users were requested to complete the following :

1. Create a account / Log In

2. Create a new event

3. Search for a vendor and contact them

4. Setting a Budget for the party

I didn’t have to change much in the testing phase here just a few colors and button colors were changed from white to blue. The users suggested that the time needed to be added when creating an event which I added and also a calendar format to choose the date which I had thought of but didn’t add it but added it later.So I didn’t share the screens here for the changes made. Overall the users were satisfied with the design and were inclined to see more.

Final Designs

After receiving feedback from the users, I made some changes to the design that were convenient for the users. Then I created the prototype and  Here is the link to the prototype. I enjoyed making this app as this is close to my heart as it was something my friends had actually dreamed of doing in the future.

Link to Figma Prototype HERE