heirlum

How would you like to be remembered?

Discovery & Research

To begin our project, we set out to understand our client’s primary reasoning behind creating this app. We held an initial meeting and collected important details about our client’s vision could turn out to be. We learned about her inspiration, the trials, looked at original assets, and even discussed assumptions.

Goals:

Initially, ‘heirlum’ was geared towards creating an heirloom to preserve the legacy of someone who had passed away. However, Holly Jee, our client, asked us to take a more neutral approach – where anyone’s legacy could be preserved whether they were physically alive or not.

To gather data on potential users, we sent out surveys. Some of the questions asked were:

• How important is it that you leave behind memories of yourself or a loved one

• How do you like to receive notifications about events?

• On a scale of 1 to 5, how much do you value the digital media you have shared with your loved ones (pictures & videos)?

• What are some ways that you think could help you feel closer to a loved one?

• On a scale from 1-5, how much do you think society rushes you out of grief?

• Do specific locations often make you think of a friend or family member?

Primary Findings

• 100% of people agreed that specific locations remind them of friends/family members

• 90% of people would like an alternative to attending a funeral if they could not attend one in person

• 90% of people thought that conventional funerals pose a financial burden on family members

User Persona

After collecting qualitative data from our survey, we created a user persona to identify their needs, goals, and frustrations.

Problem Statement:

Sunny needs a simple and immersive way to view and share both her memories and those of loved ones in order to maintain their legacies.

As a team, we asked ourselves:

• How might we display memories of someone or their loved ones in a way that is shareable and easy to locate?

• How might we make an onboarding process easy for someone who may be in the middle of the grieving process?

• How might we integrate the way someone views the legacy of themselves or loved ones into one centralized application?

Then, we decided to analyze our current findings, identify overall components of the heirlum app with a SWOT Analysis.

User Flows

Next, we knew we needed to break down and decide in clear steps how our users would navigate through the app. We knew that the whole process was necessary and opted to allow users to skip certain steps.

Since the app requires users to purchase data, we wanted to present users with the option of trialing the app before purchasing a data package.

Design Studio

After identifying the necessary steps for our user flows for each task, each member of the team took some time to ideate on what the actual app screens may look like and submitted sketches in what’s called a design studio. After sharing our sketch ideas with the team, we presented and critiqued each one while noting both the necessary and unnecessary features and/or screens.

Prototypes

From the survey, we identified users who were willing to meet via Zoom to test our prototype. For both the mid- and high-fidelity prototypes, we had users complete two key tasks.

1. complete the onboarding process (create an account and choose a payment plan)

2. create an heirlum profile

The usability tests really helped us improve the app’s interface and the way users interacted with it. For each round of tests (2), we identified user pain points.

Next Steps

• build out the AR page; users will be able to create a virtual marker, map locations, as well as use directions feature with the API for either Google or Apple maps

• add a live streaming interface for the heirlum

• integrate either Spotify or Apple music for the creating an heirlum process so that users can add their favorite songs/playlists to their page

Takeaways

Our client designed a few screens that she envisioned for her idea prior to consulting with us.

Conclusion

The majority of the participants expressed their satisfaction with the heirlum app’s flow and visual aesthetics. Furthermore, the onboarding and creating heirlum process received a positive system usability score of 89.06 and 85.63 in round two of the usability test (minimum requirement is 68). This is a positive sign that the heirlum app is heading in the right direction in terms of having a positive user experience.

Teammate Feedback

"Working with Caitland was such a great experience for me. I love how she always would push new ideas and try to view our entire project from an outsider’s perspective. She really made it a point for us to be on top of things and that really drove the key components of this project home when it was delivered to our client. Not to mention her people skills are out of this world, as she lead a lot of our usability testing throughout the project." - Kevin Provencher

““The Perfect Teammate” is the phrase that comes to mind when I think about Caitland. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Caitland for two projects during our time together at General Assembly and Caitland never fails to put us in positions to succeed. I was impressed with Caitland’s ability to tackle and solve complex problems in both UX design and research. She always had a calm and collected approach and never fails to offer valuable insights during design studios and usability tests. Above all, I believe Caitland would be a true asset for any team because she has one of the most underrated career skills of being easy to work with!” - Tony Wu

“Caitland is one of the best people you could ask for on a team. Her high-level organizational skills were perhaps one of our greatest assets as we laid the foundation for the project. I was also impressed by her supportive attitude each time a team member would bring up a new idea. Additionally, Caitland rocked the research portion of the project, conducting user interviews, synthesizing data, and relaying the collected information to the design team. I was continually inspired by her willingness to help anywhere she could and the ease at which she contributed to design decisions because of the research she conducted. She brought so much energy to the team!” - Ingrid Husby