Arch Hive
Arch Hive is an all-in-one architecture community platform. It offers various features such as portfolio, job, marketplace, and competition.
Role
UX Researcher
UI Designer
Team
Jae Chung(Co-founder)
Bennett Oh(Co-founder)
Chan Gwak(Developer)
Timeline
July 2023 (8 Weeks)
My Contribution
As the solo designer, I helped to redesign the competition feature through usability testing to discover the current pain points of users and designed the new recommendation to the team.
Project Goal
To Increase participation rate from new and existing users, user retention, and engagement
To streamline the registration process, ensuring a seamless experience for this key user segment
Problem
Competition is the primary feature which is the highest revenue coming from, User feedback highlights difficulties primarily faced by students during competition registration.
Solutions
1
Simplifying Competition Registration on Arch Hive for Students.
Divide into two sections to easily read the important information
Prioritized the information and reorganized the layout of the competition details to be easy to digest at one glance.
Before
After
Make it clear different discount offers
Divided the section for discount options under the “Available Special Offers”
Displayed the total fee before proceeding to payment
2
Before
After
Easy to track the referral discount
Able to track which email has been redeemed by displaying the email
Displaying the discount amount on the total to confirm the discount
3
Before
After
Indicating requirements to submit and consistent design
Grouped all requirements indicating with an asterisk with red colour to highlight
Make sure other text, icons, and buttons are the same colour as other fields for consistency
Having a consistent style of dropdown for “Select Category” as other fields
4
Before
After
Research
Before I started the usability testing with users, I created a research plan to set up the goal, research method, recruiting participants, establish the timeline, and deliverable.
— Test Method
Remote testing with Maze, Usabilityhub, and Google Meet
— Procedure
Background Question
Preference Test(Tool: Usabilityhub)
Usability Test with 6 tasks(Tool: Maze)
Post-Test Questions
— Participants
We recruited 5 participants regardless of location or country;
Current users of Arch Hive who have basic knowledge about the platform
Never participated in any competition held in Arch Hive
What we discovered
01. Preference Test
80% users preferred the Option B(New design) of the layout.
What users said:
“Information is better organized. Deadlines are highlighted well (important information). Highlighting like Register as behind a background gives clarity.”
“Clear and concise information, basic information readily available”
Option A
Option B
02 Usability Test
Task: Pay the regular price without getting any discount offer
60% of participants successfully completed this task.
80% of participants expressed that they had a hard time completing the task.
What users said:
“Not clear if the button is for paying the regular price”
“It doesn't seem obvious the action button is going to be the button for paying the regular price”
Task: Pay half price by signing up “Plus” membership
40% of participants successfully completed this task.
60% of participants expressed that they had a hard time completing the task.
What users said:
“I would never noticed that “Plus” is a clickable”
“I was confused what to click to sign up for the membership”
“after paying for the membership, I stayed in the same page as before paying. I wasn’t sure if I paid of not”
Task: Pay half price by inviting 2 friends
100% of participants successfully completed this task.
80% of participants expressed that they had a hard time completing the task.
What users said:
“Hard to recognized that i got redeem”
“How can I know what eamils I sent already”
Task: Fill out the form to submit the project for a competition
100% of participants successfully completed this task.
60% of participants expressed that they had a hard time completing the task.
What users said:
“When trying to submit, nothing show up what I was missing to submit. It was very frustarted”
“I didn’t know the Thumbnail was a requirement to submit”
“First thing I saw was red text and buttons, It looks like error”
Main Insight
No clear distinction between discount offers and regular pay
The current approach of using the 'OR' text to differentiate between different offers and the 'Pay Regular Price' button is causing confusion and leading to misunderstandings. A more effective solution is required to enhance user comprehension and facilitate confident decision-making.
Not a proper title for the content
The existing page bears the title 'Special Offer,' even though it includes an option for payment without applying any discount. This inconsistency needs to be addressed to accurately reflect the available choices and provide users with a clearer understanding of the content's context.
Uncertainty about total payment before proceeding with payment
Users are facing uncertainty when proceeding with payment, as the total amount they are to pay is not displayed beforehand. This holds true even if they've received a discount through referral or membership sign-up. This lack of clarity in presenting the final payment amount needs to be addressed for an improved user experience.
Lacks the ability to track their redeemed discounts
When users refer friends for discounts, the system fails to display information about the sent emails or the redeemed ones. This issue needs to be addressed to provide users with a transparent and effective means of tracking their earned benefits.
Getting off track during the registration process
The current registration process lacks seamless continuity, specifically for users signing up for membership. Upon registering for membership, users are redirected to the membership page, losing their place in the registration flow and requiring manual navigation back to the competition registration page.
The uploading requirement section is not clear
When filling out the form to submit the project, the requirement sections are not clear and submit button is active without giving any error message. That causes confusion for users that which sections are missing.
Final Overview
The seamless experience of getting a referral discount
Inviting friends with email and displaying which email they sent and they are able to track which email has been redeemed. When two friends are verified their email, a user easily notices different visual states with the check mark and shows the total amount after the discount.
Keeping them on the right track during the registration
Click “Join PLUS” leads to the membership page, after paying the membership, it redirects to this page to keep registering for the competition so that they can keep registering the competition. And indicating they got a PLUS membership discount on the right section.
Helping users to better experience uploading their projects
Having a proper title for the page, “Upload Project”
Showing what is the requirement section to submit the project
Reduce the red colour on the forms such as text, buttons, and icons unless they are error state
Make sure the “Submit” button is active when all requirements are filled out
Takeaways
Leadership, working with constraints, and user research
It was my first usability test by myself with real users to help a Startup company. Thanks to the Arch Hive team to support all recruiting processes and make the testing site. Working on this project taught me about creating a research plan, scheduling and facilitating usability testing, writing reports, and designing to solve the pain points I’ve gathered. There was a time I faced a tough situation when one of the participants was in a bad internet network, we couldn’t hear our voice each other. So we had to reschedule the meeting. So it took a little bit more time than we planned. I’ve learned that I should consider the participant's environment such as interview connection, time zone, and basic tech knowledge.