UX CASE STUDY
Responsive website designed with a mobile-first approach to deliver multiple features to Linga Bhairavi temple devotees and other people worldwide. An interactive platform involving online meditation tutorials, event and ritual booking, as well as blogs and other informative sections.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Context
Isha Foundation is a global non-profit which operating many projects for socio-economic and environmental causes. Their temples dedicated to the feminine Goddess Linga Bhairavi involve a variety of activity happening at the ground.
Goals of the Project
To update the legacy website.
The new one should be a comprehensive online platform attending to the variety of needs from existing users.
It should encourage people to opt for paid services thereby boosting the organization's revenue.
It also needs to reach to more people and introduce them to the concept of devinine feminine, the benefists, and the related temple services.
Project Duration
Aug 2022 - March 2023
My Roles and Responsibilities
Team Lead
Design Strategy and WBS.
Collaboration with the development & business client teams.
UX Designer
Design Sprints:
Research
Ideation
Information architecture
Prototyping
Testing
Communication with the cliental team for approval.
Product outcome
DESIGN PROCESS
Iterative and non linear design thinking was adopted where user was kept at the centre. At the same time, technical feasibility and business viability were considered.
USER RESEARCH
Research Summary
In person interiews at the meditation halls to understand how the users presently accomplish the task. I interviewed 7 users from various social backgrounds to get more insight into their motivation and pain points. By talking, observing, engaging and empathizing with them, I was able to pull few key findings that would help shape the project.
Prior to finding people for interviews, we defined possible users into 4 main categories:
Well versed devotee of Linga Bhairavi
Somewhat familiar with Linga Bhairavi and Isha foundation
Not familiar with Linga Bhairavi but knows about feminine temples
Not familiar with Linga Bhairavi or feminine temples
Competitive analysis was done to understand competition better.
Examples and elemenst from different domains were observed to learn about structural and visual trends.
Research Pain Points
Users were not able to access the application in mobile or tablet.
There was a lot of information overload in the older site.
They are not able to book most rituals online and schedule their temple visits. Only a few were available with forms that were complicated and scattered.
They struggled to find resources to learn more chants and meditations.
DEFINING PROBLEM
Problem statement(s)
There were multiple problem statements for different scenarios, an example of it is:
While booking a meditation ritual at the temple,
To provide with important lunar calender dates around which the user might be more interested to book the ritual.
User personas
Considering the 4 categories of users we defined in the research stage, 2 were selected post the process to base our behaviours on. Personas were created on the following two kinds of users:
Well versed devotee of Linga Bhairavi
Somewhat familiar with Linga Bhairavi and Isha foundation
Not familiar with Linga Bhairavi but knows about feminine temples
Not familiar with Linga Bhairavi or feminine temples
IDEATING
Brainstorming
Sessions conducted included participants from wide range of teams like the business, development, client teams to identify implicit and explicit user needs.
Whiteboard affinity diagrams and journey maps were created.
Often these sessions would result into considering several approaches for overall structures and flows, but also specific elements like cards, banners, etc.
User flow diagram
To illustrate the user flow within the application, several user flows were discussed.
Low fidelity wireframes
As simplicity and ease of use were one of the major focus in this project, the screens were designed to increase the learnability and memorability of the application.
Pen and paper wireframes were mainly used within the design team and with the users to get initial feedback in the iteration. These ultimately translated into final UI designs:
PROTOTYPING
Wireframes: High Fidelity
These were created and shown to users for testing and initial ideation to filter out the best solutions through A/B testing, co-designing, and other approaches.
This was directly communicated to the visual design team for UI designing.
High fidelity Prototypes
These were created and iterated over user testing and feedback cycles.
I have the design files to show the visual design. The live product could be seen at LingaBhairavi.org.
TESTING
Medium: In person through Sketches/paper wireframes, Figma mirror.
Conducted A/B and usability tests over different funtionalities of the site in different iterations.
Volunteers who helped with testing were observed and later interviewed.
Used heuristic evaluations for analysis to iterate the prototypes over multiple cycles.
Users were presented with different flows for the same functionality to see which one they responded best to:
REFLECTION OVER LEARNING
It is helpful to involve a wide range of participants in the ideation sessions for the design sprints.
Team work is very important to achieve desirable results out of a project.
This was a lucky project as we had an easy access to the users. Our work location was next to the temple where we found many users who would/could use the site. This helped a lot with research and testing.
It's better to experiment earlier in the process and in wireframe stage than later on. This makes seeking feedback earlier even more important.
Less is more in payment flows. Critical information helps users make better decisions and at the same time reduces drop outs.
Thank you for reading!