The full competitor and UX analyses I did for Tattoodo are below.
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Role: UX Designer
The goal of this project was to create an application which would help users explore tattoo inspiration and find an artist to execute the user’s idea. The process of choosing a tattoo design can be emotional and for some users, requires a fair amount of time investment and trust in a tattoo artist. Throughout this project, I sought to explore and improve the experiences people have while finding a tattoo, getting a tattoo, and after they’ve received a tattoo.
I began this project by taking stock and doing some research. In addition to the project brief, which is summarized above, I looked to gain some insight by performing a competitive analysis. This gave me a good idea of what’s currently available to the audience and some insight into the problems that other products had addressed.
The target audience for this project is people between the ages of 25-40. InkWell will be geared towards the mature and insightful individual who is cultivating a piece of work that represents who they are.
To help further explore the problem and possible solutions, I conducted competitor research.
Tattoodo, is a potential competitor which offers a way for users to collect tattoo inspiration, get information about tattooing, and find artists and studios. Tattoodo is a particular meaningful competitor because it attempts to address some of the emotional issues that users have while finding a tattoo.
Click to expand this section to see a brief UX and competitor analyses for Tattoodo.
Users already have the ideas of what they want in their heads. They use tattoo images as a sounding board. They look for similar tattoos to see if it looks right on the body or if they stylistically like how something was done.
“I’m looking for something that’s attempting to convey the meaning that I’m looking for.”
In general, users seemed not to know exactly how they were going to convey their ideas to their artists. There was consensus that it should be an evolving conversation.
“I feel like the next one [tattoo] that I want is really complicated and I’m struggling to figure out how to do that.”
Users don’t view the actual act of getting a tattoo as emotional, however they do view the content as having emotional ties to their lives.
“[for me] they’re pictographs of emotional things, but a tattoo is symbolic of the emotions, but the act of getting a tattoo itself is not emotional.”
No single inspiration app allows users to record all their inspiration (screenshots, notes, pins, google search results, pictures taken on the phone), so users tend to keep their inspiration in a number of different places.
At this point, I had a lot of questions for potential users about what they’re looking for when searching for a tattoo and tattoo artist. To answer these questions and gain more (hopefully unforeseen) insight into the user, I conducted user interviews.
Personas were created by analyzing research outcomes and identifying relevant common and overlapping sentiments.
During research, I discovered that user needs didn’t fluctuate very much with age, so I didn’t feel that it was necessary to create an older persona. This makes sense, once you hit your mid-20’s, your prefrontal cortex is more fully developed and your decision making becomes less erratic.
User journey maps were created. The scenarios chosen reflected the most common concerns showed by participants during interviews.
User flows were also created and gave a better idea of some of the screens which would be needed for users to complete tasks.
Based on everything learned so far in the project, the following problem statement was devised. In addition, I identified some of the issues users identified and potential solutions to those problems.
I used information from the journey maps, user flows, and functional goals for the product to layout a first sitemap draft. I also went through and performed a content audit on some of the competitor sites and added logical steps/architecture I might have been missing. I quickly sketched out some wireframes to make sure I was including all the screens I could foresee and that navigation made sense.
I then conducted a card sort using all the pages I had identified in the first sitemap. I wanted to see how a user would approach the information. Below is a visual representation of some of the results and how I used the information to create categories to group the items together.
I analyzed the data and revised the sitemap.
I conducted a usability heuristics review on Tattoodo, both to see if there are preexisting pitfalls to avoid and to see what potential users may be already accustomed to using.
Using all that information, I then proceeded through low-fidelity, mid-fidelity and finally high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes.
The usability test conducted can be summarized as follows:
Objectives:
Questions to Answer:
Method:
perform a combination of in-person and remote moderated tests of 6 diverse participants in the target audience
Participants were given the following tasks:
I analyzed the data from the user testing. The below is a brief summary of the findings and examples of iterations made to one of the screens.
I also conducted a preference test for several of the screens, one of which is shown below.
After making all needed iterations based on the user testing, I also tested the prototype with a group of other designers to get their feedback. Below are three examples of how I incorporated comments into my design.
Throughout my design process, I documented the interface decisions in a preliminary UI component style guideline. I combed through my design to make sure that all the components followed the same interface principles.
Link to InkWell Prototype Video Presentation
I used the following tools during this project
InkWell has a lot of growing to do. There are several aspects of the app which I would like to flesh out more completely and some functionalities which I would like to create. As always, the prototype could benefit from more user testing and revision based on the feedback.
Here are two other case studies for projects I've worked on.
See my design process for this responsive website and how I approached client and user needs.
I designed and developed my first portfolio using rudimentary coding skills.
