Overview
This protects is developed as part of a 4 weeks workshop Advanced Service Design, in MAS Interaction design under mentorship of FrogDesign – Milano, at SUPSI, Lugano, Switzerland in association with Nydia Chavarria and Silvia Natale.
DesignWanted is an international digital platform oriented at the promotion of the best design, architecture and tech. Much more than a digital publication and a flourishing Instagram page, since October 2015 DesignWanted brings together professionals, creatives and entrepreneurs from diverse range of background to share knowledge, tools and opportunities.
DesignWanted is the natural continuation of his entrepreneurial path, founded by Patrick Abbattista and co-founder Francesco Pozzobon with with the clear idea in mind of helping design enthusiasts to change this world. From the idea, to the brand, to the business: everyone who started a project from scratch knows the effort it takes to develop a brilliant concept, and most designers lack the ability to turn their project into a brand and to develop a successful business from there. DesignWanted provides talents with an integrated eco-system of marketing tools and practical business plans along with accessible opportunities to attend international events and contests, to reach a relevant audience, to see and to be seen.
We have been asked to develop Added Value Services and rework the entire site. I mainly worked on the UI part of the site always counting the UX part.
The question
First, the question we needed to answer was: What type of content and features offer added value to a design platform user?
So we conducted a user research based on 3 main actors: Experienced designers, designers with a different background and beginner designers.
And this is what we found: We wanted to know what was attractive for each of these users to find about design in terms of content, features and social channels.
Learn
As we can see all the three actors are interested in learning, with the slight difference that , designers with a different background learn from doing a lot of research and beginner designers are interested in learning from experienced designers.
Design process
Experienced and with a different background designers are interested in knowing about the design process. In detailed explanations that involve even the thinking process. And designers with a different background learn from this type of content and find it interesting if its related to their background.
Events
The three actors find events interesting, with the difference that experienced designers find events interesting for networking and the other two, for learning and find inspiration.
Organized
Experienced and beginners mentioned that for them is important to find order in content, the designers with different background did not mention anything.
The features
What functions must be in our platform
Collaboration with other professions
The first two actors like features that allows them to collaborate and work with others.
Personal space
All of them find it valuable to have a personal space, where they can show their work and save material for inspiration.
Receive and give feedback
For all of them this is one of the main types of collaboration they are interested in. They like to share knowledge and to get feedback from others to improve their work. For beginners, is more important to receive feedback.
The social channels
Which platforms do they use most?
To promote
Experienced designers use dribble, linked in and dribble. With a different background use Linked in and beginners use Behance.
To do research
The first two actors use google of course and the third one was more focused on getting inspired.
To update and get inspired:
Experienced use Pinterest and twitter. Designers with different background did not mention and beginners also mentioned Pinterest.
Value Proposition
So as a value proposition for this concept, we are offering a Learning Experience Service that connects experienced designers, professionals interested in design and entrepreneurs, in order to learn, share knowledge, network and promote by becoming a tutor, learning and living an experience, getting personalized feedback and contributing to the knowledge network.
Brand Identity
We noticed that the brand did not use a color that characterized it. We have therefore chosen to propose a color that gives freshness and that makes the brand more identifiable. I made a change to the logo to make it more usable on the internet page, in fact it lends itself better to a horizontal logo rather than a vertical one.
Prototype
For the prototype we used Invision, to have a clear vision of the project, I recommend the vision of the prototype. Click to test the prototype
Visual Screens
The main tabs are Newsroom, designers, learn, events. To see the remaining secondary screens, I recommend going to see the prototype.
Feedback mode
Thanks to this new feature it is easy to receive feedback from the customer, or if you choose to make the project public with the possibility of leaving feedback. This gives the right focus to what you are addressing, the consultation of feedback has never been so dynamic and fun.