Pub Nicer

 UX/UI Design Project - 15 Minutes Reading
Project Overview
Pub Nicer is a reservation app specially designed for reserving seats for thai pubs. This project is on going along with learning the Coursera Google UX Certificate Course. This project is still in progress of creating Lo-fi prototypes of the app.
My Responsibilities
I am responsible for everything in the project from start to end. I follow the instructions from the course along with the process of design thinking.
Pub Nicer
Google UX Design Certificate
Sep 2022- Present
The purpose of this Google certificate is to help anyone learn skills and the thought processes of UX/UI. So, for learners to get the "Google UX Design Certificate", learners have to start their projects along with learning through all of the courses which has examples, practices, and assignments that tell us how to conduct a UX/UI project. Which is why I, as a part of learners in this certificate, have to conduct this project.

I start this project with one of my everyday's problems which is "Is there a more efficient way for people to reserve seats before going to pubs? "As a university student who love to go hanging out with friends, I struggle with this question a lot. After studying for a long time, me and my friends want to do something or go to some where to rest and have fun which going to pubs is somewhat always come to us as our first thoughts. Then, the struggles suddenly appear in the process even before we decide to go like someone has other appointments, or cannot decide which is the better pub to go.

These are just some examples of the struggles when going to pubs. and after asking my friends, many of them agree and point out more problems like the frustration of public transports, the bad feeling about security and night time, etc.

Today we have reservation apps for many things but the apps for pubs are rare to find so the goal of this project is "Creating a reservation app for thai pubs". But still, not everybody has the same problem. That is why I have to conduct a research for this project first.

Keep in mind that every processes that I use in this project are from Google. It is not the only ideal way of doing projects.

This is my Google Drive files of my project feel free to check it out! (Some files and folder have restrict access because of the conscent contracts.)
Link
Conscent Form

Integrating Research

To get the goals and problems of users, doing interviews work great for project like this but before any interviews, there fews steps that I have to do. The first step is to determine the interview goals. My first goal is to understanding the processes and emotions that people experience around the reservation app, the the second goal is to dentifying common user behaviors and experiences with pubs, concerts, and festivals that they participate in, and the last goal is to identifying user needs and frustrations as they go to pubs, concerts, and festivals.

The second step is to recruit participants for interviews. Every participants have to approve the conscent of sharing their information by signing a conscent from. For people who wants to start recruiting participants for your project, keep in mind that this is my do and try project so the participants may not be the ideal representative sample which is a subset of the target population that seeks to accurately reflect the characteristics of the larger group.

The third and fourth step is to schedule interview and write interviews question. I choose online interview because it is still covid time and all of participants are okay with it. I use open-ended questions for interviews along with follow-up questions depending on each participants.

Pain Points

Empathize & Define

After the interview process, I rewatched every interviews and write them in transcripts. I then create empathy maps to identify and understand the participants. What I get from this process is how frustrate of them about 2 different problems. The first problem is about schedule. From university students, their main problem is how busy they are and it is hard to find the right time for everyone when going to pubs as a group. The second problem is about the information about pubs, many participants are not sure about the places like theme of the pubs, how crowd the pubs are, and one of participants have experienced sexual harassments.

With these problems and frustrations that they express. I am bable to create 2 personas which represents two types of user who usually go to pubs. The first persona is Book and the second persona is Jin.

Book and Jin Personas

Book and Jin

Book represents university students who love hanging out with friends but have busy schedules. Jin, on the other hand are the representative of junior employees who love to try new things, prioritize socializing, and want to meet new people. They both have their main focus and problems as you can see in the picture above.

Then I create user stories, user patterns, problem statements and if/then statements for both personas as you can see from the picture below. (Book is on the left and Jin is on the right.)

User stories, user patterns, problem statements and if/then statements

I also create a value preposition jamboard for pointing on potential Functions and costs for my app and also create a competitive audit for reservation apps in Thailand in order to understand competitors.

See my value preposition (Google Jamboard):
Link
See my competitive audit (Google Sheets): Link
See my competive audit report (Google Docs): Link

Goal Statements

Ideate

After the understanding of users and competitors, I then move to the next step which is ideate. By doing all the previous processes, I am now be able to create goal statements for both persona as you can see in the picture above.


Then, I create user flows for both representative users. to prepare for the prototype process.

Book's User Flow

User Flow (Book)

Book (Persona) is a representative of busy student with confusing schedule. In order for Book to help book, schedule function that can sync with the others may become handy for Book and his friends. now Book and friends don't have to worry about their schedules. They can add friend list in the apps and the app will tell Book when is the right time to reserve seats.

Jin's User Flow

User Flows (Jin)

Jin (Persona) has many concerns about pubs but still wants to go to meet new people. So, for Jin, having a compare pub function will definitely help. The app also have all the information of each pub and can be compare to the others. Now, Jin can do some quick researchs about pubs before deciding to go.

And for a more clear understanding of users using app. I then create storyboards for both of them. Google way of doing storyboards has two type of approach which are big-picture and close-up storyboard. as you can see from pictures below.

Storyboards

According to Google, big-picture storyboards focus on the overall experience of the user and close-up storyboards focus on how users use the app to reach their goals.

After I have the clear picture of how users will use the app. Now, I am moving to the next process which is prototype.

Prototypes

Prototype

In this process, I first create lo-fi paper wireframes to quickly brainstorm my UI design for home page. Then, I implement them to the digital version of wireframe in Figma.

Paper Wireframe

Lo-fi Paper Wireframes

I create the first 5 lo-fi paper wireframes for my home page. I then reorganize those and use them as the reference to create the final design for my home. Using pen and paper for wireframes is by far the fastest. These wireframes are easy to do and understand.

Wireframes

Lo-Fi Digital Wireframes

I first create 2 user flows for each personas for easier to start and implement and then I combined them to gether to check the mistakes and problems when users have both problems.

Now, that I have the digital version of wireframes. I can transform them in to lo-fi prototypes.

Picture Cover of Pub Nicer Portfolio

For prototypes, I create from both of user flows, and then combined them in order to check and see if there are any more problems if users have to go through both user flows. This my link for my prototypes in Figma. You can choose to follow the flow of use from Book or Jin persona at the top-right corner of your desktop display. Feel free to check around!

Lo-fi Prototype: Link

Wow! You have read to the very last paragraph! Thank you! But the bad news is that I am still studying this course so the rest of the processes which are high felidity prototypes and testing. I will update this site again as soon as possible if I have further improvement or finish the next process. ;D

Do you want to know more about my past works? If you want, you can check my other works below...

See other works in my portfolio...