This is my first UX Design case study project. This project is a part of the Google UX Design Professional Certificate course. The objective of this project is to learn the process of UX Design, foundational UX concepts like user-centered design and accessibility, understand the basics of UX research, like planning research studies, conducting interviews and usability studies, and synthesizing research results.
India is a nation of people with a wide range of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems. The wedding process, ceremonies, and rituals vary from one community to another and one state to another except for certain common rituals.
I have used the Design Thinking process for this project as it is taught throughout the Google UX Design course. It is a set of cognitive, strategic processes which include five stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
I conducted the user interviews to identify the user pain points, needs, opinions, and expressions. I created the empathy map from the data I gathered from the research. A primary user group identified was the parents of the couples who are going to be married soon.
This user group revealed the pain points and challenges during the wedding days. The research also revealed that to conclude the marriage successfully, you have to take care of every obstacle such as Management, Time, Guests, Food, etc.
“Everyone has different methods of performing the ceremonies”
“Taking care of the guests is the most challenging”.
“When to start preparing for the wedding, it depends on the people and the money they have.”
“It is important to make sure that no one feels hurt or left out.”
Vidya is a Doctor and mother of a daughter who is going to married soon, who needs A detailed list of all ceremonies to perform at the wedding because She does not have much knowledge about all the ceremonies to be performed.
These are a few goals to conduct the competitive analysis. But we will focus on the first goal which is — Discover the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor.
To find the competitors, I searched on the play store for wedding planner apps. I found a few apps for Wedding Planning in India. Such as, WedMeGood App is the most popular in India. Few other similar apps are Weddingz.in, WeddingWire.in and WeddingSutra. These are the wedding planner apps available for Indian Marriages. They provide similar functionalities and checklists for the wedding.
For the indirect competitors, I considered the app Indya, which is the online shopping app for Indian ethnic wear for women. This app has a similar user base but different functionality.
You can refer to the Competitive Audit Matrix here.
I created a user flow to understand how the user would interact with the product. I also created a Big picture storyboard and a Close-up storyboard to visually describe and explores a user’s experience with a product.
Taking time to draft iterations of each screen of the app on paper ensured that the elements that made it to digital wireframes would be well-suited to address user pain points. For the home screen, I prioritized making a new ceremony checklist.
See Low Fidelity Prototype in Figma here.
I conducted a usability study to test the low-fidelity prototype. The goal of the research was to determine if users can complete the core tasks within the prototype of the ceremony checklist app. Also, try to find out if the users find it difficult to use.
You can refer to the Research Study Plan here.
Some insights identified based on the usability study:
You can refer to the Notetaking spreadsheet for the usability testing here. After gathering the data from the usability study, I organized the data into groups with common themes and created an Affinity Diagram. I transferred all the observations from the research study participants onto individual sticky notes.
From the insights that I acquired from the usability study, I redesigned the digital wireframes that enhance the user experience with the product. With the help of digital wireframes, I designed the mockups of each screen and then connected them to create a High-Fidelity Prototype.
Saptapadi (English: seven steps, saptapadī) is the most important rite (Sanskrit: rītī) of a Hindu marriage ceremony. The word, Saptapadi means “Seven steps”. After tying the Mangalsutra, the newlywed couple takes seven steps, which is called Saptapadi. After the seventh step, the couple legally becomes husband and wife.
I selected this project because I am an Indian and in India, the Wedding is a big part of an Indian man/woman’s life journey. Every Indian wedding reflects the culture of the country, which means, attending a wedding in India is like exploring a part of the country.
This case study project is my first ever project that is made using the proper human-centered approach of Design Thinking. I learned how to plan and conduct user research and interview. I was able to empathize with users and understand their pain points and thoughts. I created designs on paper and digital design tools like Figma.
