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Tools: Figma, Google Suite
The Inccubator
Redesigning a multi-cultural digital publishing and social networking site with a wide variety of content and features
Overview
The Incc. team was in the process of building their platform as they finished thye details of their plan. The working idea was a social networking platform for entrepreneurs from minority communities - a place for these communities to build and connect with each other. In its initial state, it was a confusing collage of features from competitive platforms built around the Incc’s published content and no purposeful organization.
Goals
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Consolidate the wide variety of content and features into a single experience, instead of a hub of separate experiences.
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Determine a style and voice that fits the platform’s purpose from the perspective of the users and the Incc. team.
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Create a foundation of research and design for the Incc. team to build with as they continued to develop their ideas and platform.
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Provide guidance for the development of additional work-in-progress features that were outside of the scope of work.
Research Approach
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Competitive research for the features that are incorporated in the platform.
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9 guided discussion through the site with beta testers, familiar with the project.
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6 usability tests with new users, verbalizing their thought processes.
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Discussions with project stakeholders before and after conducting our initial research.
Findings
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Original layout was confusing and lacked a true focus.
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Features and functionality were easy to assume up front, but would get muddled as users continued through each additional content or feature.
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Branding and styling were competing against the features and proposed purpose of the platform.
Redesign
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Organize the site structure, tying creator content and The Incc. published content together, and improve the main navigation to shape the total experience.
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Create a space to share content or thoughts and an organized way to explore it.​​
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Restructure page layouts with purposeful content and features that are easy to use and easy to navigate to and from.
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Create a styling that aids in the new organization of content.
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Redesign the main pages for the Incc. platform - the homepage (a personal content dashboard), a profile page, cultural content page from The Incc., and a user-created content page.
User Landing Page
​Points of concern
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The landing page left users confused as to what they were supposed to do on the site.
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There was a lot of content presented to them at once and it was not clear what that content was.
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The tone of the site and what kind of content was appropriate to post here was unclear.
Proposal
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Relocate the cultural content to it's own page and create a focus of connecting and sharing with others.
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Allow content creators to upload to their channels directly from the landing page - pics, videos, blogs.
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Post published content from The Incc. as a special kind of subscription content on the feed.
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Clarify the tone of a post by introducing a more serious kind of casual post - discussions and posts.
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Allow easy access to the cultural channels users subscribe to - have it populate the content feed.
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Reduce clutter by introducing a 2 column layout.
Cultural Content Pages
​Points of concern
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Content page is the landing page and content feed, creating confusion
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Navigating to different channels brought you to the same landing page with new content, creating confusion.
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Navigating to a new page to see each new piece of content for each channel became tedious.
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It was not immediately clear what type of content lived within each category, headings were unclear.
Proposal
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Relocate each cultural channel to it's own page and provide a single space for all of the types content to be explored by a user.
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Create a distinction between the channels that is visually appealing and exciting.
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Clarify the types of content.
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Create a page for all of the published cultural content to exist and be explored. Reorganizing content by topic as opposed to medium.
User Content Page
​Points of concern
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Users shouldn't explore The Incc. content by medium, but rather by topic.
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Neither the creator or the content was presented in an interesting way.
Proposal
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Create a single space for all types of user created content for users to explore.
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Highlight creators and user created content to promote interaction within the platform.
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Profile Page
​Points of concern
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The profile page was boring and had a lot of sections that could be left empty, taking up space.
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The profile page did not create an easy way to manage the content the user has created.
Proposal
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Condense the profile information into one section with tabs to filter through the content.
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Condense the users created or posted content into one section with tabs to filter by type.
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Create a visually appealing page to invite other users to learn about you and explore your content.
Prototype Walkthrough
Thinking Ahead
Thinking ahead for The Inccubator, I would think about the following:
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Designing the rest of the pages for the website to match the visual interest we've created in the prototype and to ensure there is no more clutter or confusion
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How the user is exposed to the cultural content created internally by The Inccubator is important for highlighting one of the main features that makes the site unique. We've proposed to have it posted in your feed as if The Inccubator is one of the people you follow
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There is more to be discussed about the points of interaction between users and the content they are sharing or viewing on the site
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Does each cultural channel have a discussion forum of some kind?
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Is it appropriate for users to post memes?
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What kind of comment threading should be available?
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There are several aspects of the site that could use gamification to entice user interaction
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Badges to show your involvement in sponsoring creators​
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Badges to show your involvement on the website
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Badges to show your involvement in your community​
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