Walnut Lane Barn
Photo Sharing Website
UX Design Project | March 2023
Role
UX Designer
Featured items
Sketches, wireframes, high
and low fidelity prototypes
Walnut Lane Barn is a small boutique venue that mostly caters to weddings, but occasionally books birthday parties, showers and other celebrations.
The problem: Customers who attend events find it difficult to share photos because they don’t know phone numbers, have issues with image quality when sharing and feel the whole process isn’t easy. Additionally, people who are holding the event find it difficult to track down candid photos after the event is over.
The way we’re solving the problem is to create a photo sharing website to help people easily share photos with friends and family members.
Understanding the user
I conducted user interviews by sending questions over email to better understand them and their needs. The findings weren’t surprising: users want a website that is easy to use and something that doesn’t lose image quality.
After gathering initial research, I was able to figure out three major paint points:
Time: Working individuals are more likely to be busy outside of events, so a reliable tool to use during the event is needed to avoid remembering to share later.
Image quality loss: Guests use their phones at events, but sharing images between phones sometimes sacrifices the image quality which is an inconvenience and disappointment.
Lack of organization: Because events can be very large, it can be hard to give or get photos and people can miss out on great candid shots.
Starting the design
From research findings, I began design work by developing a sitemap and then moved to paper wireframes. The goal was to create one user flow, so I decided to start from the homepage of the website to uploading a photo on a personal dashboard, adding the necessary steps in between.
After paper wireframes were drawn and a user flow established, it was time to
move to creating digital wireframes using Adobe XD.
Low fidelity prototyping and testing
moving to high fidelity work
I developed a research plan which helped me outline my first usability study. Three people participated in an unmoderated usability study where they responded to a set of questions. I developed insights from the answers given. My findings were: most of the website was easy to navigate because of the clear type hierarchy, large buttons and minimal layouts. But the login area needed to be more clear by using a label for the icon rather than only having the icon. Some users might not understand to click the profile icon to login.
After understanding the information gained from the usability study, I could move from low fidelity prototyping to high fidelity mockups and prototyping.
