Founded in 1984, Upper Crust is a beloved local spot in the heart of North Austin, serving a wide arrangement of baked goods from pies to sandwiches to fresh baked bread and more.
Taking into account the current state of the world and the effects Covid has had on businesses, many have started increasing their presence online. For Upper Crust, while they do already have an online presence in the form of a website and social media accounts, they want to revamp their site to increase their reach as well as provide customers with easier access to information about their bakery and what they offer.
Affinity Publisher, Figma, Discord, OBS
UX Designer (Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design, User Testing)
Secondary Research:
Primary Research:
In the competitive analysis portion, I found five local bakeries offering similar products and looked into how each competitor adjusted for Covid and how they each portray their products online.
From the market research conducted on industry trends and patterns and general demographic, I was able to create three provisional personas that roughly represent the range of customers of bakeries.
One of the key methods of research for this project was the user interviews. With this project, one of the major difficulties was finding customers to interview in the given time. Despite that, I was able to talk to a wide array of customers and get valuable feedback on their experiences with Upper Crust, both good and bad.
After conducting the user interviews, I created an empathy map using the transcripts from the recorded interviews. From there, those groupings were then used to discover key insights of the customers we interviewed along with needs that would address those insights.
Insights
Needs
Taking into consideration the user interviews and the data I was able to collect, I created a persona to better reflect the general demographic and their key goals, frustrations and needs.
In order to move forward, I needed more concrete problems to solve. To do that, I created a POV & HMW chart in order to expand on the original problem.
Once I created those "How Might We" Questions, I used those as the basis for brainstorming potential solutions that would specifically target the needs brought up in the persona.
After getting to sit down with the owner of Upper Crust and hearing their goals for their business, I outlined both the goals that were realized from our interviews as well as the goals stated by the owner and created a Venn diagram to hone in on a unified goal for this project.
Referencing the major goals I outlined, I created a product roadmap that further detailed how I would go about achieving those goals.
To get started incorporating the main features for a MVP, I created a simple outline showcasing the hierarchy of pages within the website.
In conjunction with both the site map and the UI requirements that I outlined, I created a flow of actions and pages to reflect the ideal and linear nature of a user performing specific tasks.
To broaden the scope of the task flow and start to take into account user decisions and potential drop-off points within the task flow, I needed to create this user flow to discover those deviations that could take place during the task.
After cementing the task flows that I'd be designing, I began sketching pretty general layouts to create the general look that I planned on going for.
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Once those sketches were finished, I went into Figma to draft a mid-fidelity variant in order to proceed with prototype, then testing.
In the prototyping phase, for testing purposes, I created a mid-fidelity prototype of the re-imagined website for Upper Crust Bakery. With this prototype, there were a few things I wanted to achieve and discover through testing;
Testing Goals:
Testing Methodology:
Moderated Think-Aloud Method: I will conduct this method over Zoom or the appropriate Voice Call Software by asking participants to verbalize their thoughts and actions all while completing the specified tasks through their screen-share. All sessions, both video and audio, will be recorded via OBS with consent.
Taking the notes from our usability test, we created an Affinity Map to make sense of, and organize the data into patterns observed. From our findings, we discovered that there were two crucial insights:
These insights led themselves to potential solutions that led to the final revisions for our prototype.
These are the potential solutions that I ended up suggesting, in accordance with the feedback received from the usability test participants. Here, they are arranged in order of priority, based off of impact and cost:
One added thing that needed major updates for the High Fidelity revision was a necessary makeover. The previous sketches and lower fidelity versions of the website still looked quite outdated which was one of the major things I had intended to address when first starting this project.
This project definitely got me out of my comfort zone. With the other projects, there was an ease to the one-on-one interview processes as I could find acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances to interview. With this project, it was definitely not the case as I had to find active customers of Upper Crust to interview. In addition to that, the actual design of the website was a challenge in its own right. The case of designing a site that has more modern influences while retaining the look of a bakery website required a fragile balance between the two.
This project definitely got me out of my comfort zone. With the other projects, there was an ease to the one-on-one interview processes as I could find acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances to interview. With this project, it was definitely not the case as I had to find active customers of Upper Crust to interview. In addition to that, the actual design of the website was a challenge in its own right. The case of designing a site that has more modern influences while retaining the look of a bakery website required a fragile balance between the two.
