DY|REDECO

Overview

DY|REDECO began the creation of a B2B & B2C application with the vision of becoming the next biggest interior design platform that would streamline all the interior design process in one.

The goal of this project was to  identify the designers needs, determine the functionalities that were required for them to digitize their process, and ultimately build a solution and launch a beta release to test it with a selected group of people.

See prototype here.

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Background

DY|REDECO is a Barcelona-based internet interior design company that connects interior designers to their customers through the design process and the customer buying experience.

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I was the sole product designer of the founding team

I joined DY|REDECO as a UX/UI intern, I was the only one designers in a company of 2 founders, and one data analyst. I was responsible for the product design and UX/UI experience for the app.

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Key Achievements

I learned and grown tremendously in that 1+ year, some key achievements of which I have listed below:

• Turned an idea into a product. The ability to transform an idea into something much more tangible is a process that is both exhilarating and rewarding. I worked closely with the founders and team to shape the product vision and strategy of the company.
• Implemented a design process. This helped the team understand and establish a UX/UI process, and allowed other teams to gain visibility across the upcoming sprints.
• Juggled many different hats. Working in an early-stage startup is always a challenge. I dedicated hours of my spare time and weekends conducting research, sketching, testing and designing the product alongside writing video scripts, creating pitch deck presentations and finding new team members for the business.

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Understanding the problem

Before DY|REDECO even hired a designer team, a landing page was released to validate that the product had a market fit. These site gathered a list of emails of people that joined the waitlist for the product and agreed to participate in our ongoing research.

I conducted research interviews with some of the participants to uncover any pain points that they were experiencing in their current workflow.
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My research encompassed:

• Understanding the user goals and needs
• Uncovering pain points their current task flow
• Identify the designers profiles

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Design Process

Following a non-linear IDEO´s Human-centered Design, and the lean Ux thinking process was going to help me with the design decisions, making it sure that they were based on insights coming from the interviews and feedback from the prototype testing.

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Gathering insights

After collecting the recordings from the user interviews, and conducting a new set of interviews, I conducted 2 affinity mapping sessions with the founders to synthesise the data identified. We grouped the information and profiled the designers. I also conducted a couple of workshops with the whole team later on to work on job stories, affinity map grouping in different stages of the company, user journey and ideation.

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Personas

Based on the research, we recognised that there were 3 key user types that our product tried to solve problems for. We decided to focus on Persona 1 since their need was greatest and we could reach them via designer portfolio websites, such as hozz.

1. The renowned Interior designer who has many of experience and a constant flow of clients, usually works as a freelancer or has his own studio.
2. The younger designer who has worked in small things here and there, but doesn’t have a good stable job, nor the experience to get one yet, we could call them freelancers by no choice.
3. The inbetweener who has worked for a couple of years and now is working in a company.

Interior designers are professionals who create beautiful spaces, but their process involves different tools and needs.

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Job Stories

To understand how designers work in different contexts, what motivates them and what's the outcome of their process, I used the jobs to be done framework based on the previous interviews.

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Identifying & Prioritizing Pain Points

After collecting the recordings from the user interviews, I conducted affinity mapping with my teammate to synthesise the pains identified. We grouped these problems under common themes and features in the platform

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Then I prioritized based on what was more important to the user and also to the company, the result was the core functions that designers needed.

• Fast and constant communication
• Finding the perfect product
• Getting feedback
• Logistics
• Hustling after purchase

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The product vision

As a product, we wanted to position ourselves as the leading digital interior design platform with 2 key focus areas:

One stop shop - We want to help designers achieve their designs by providing them with a broad catalogue with popular brands and allowing them to suggest and sign up local brands, in order to create their clients moodboard and facilitate their clients purchasing process having all the products in one place.

Creating and sharing their proposal- We want to provide individuals with an all in one tool, so they can communicate with their clients, having a step by step project flow to exchanges their creations and feedback for them to fully achieve their clients visions and being able to share it in their most preferred way.

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Defining the MVP

I conducted workshops and sketching sessions with the team to map out the user flow and come up with a storyboard to capture the MVP.

We identified the following key features:

• Huge Catalogue. Allow users to browse through a catalogue with many products, and also having the hability to suggest or sign up a local brand.
• Relevant products. Something that designers struggled with were finding the right products, so the platform would give them the ability to quicly filter around their needs, including the commission fee they would receive was a must..
• Creating and sharing their proposals. Having a platform that allowed them to view the project progress over time, including all client feedback and product inventory. An also allows them to share though various methods.
• Update the design in real time. If shared via link, the client could see the latest designer update that synchronized in the moment, including text responds or product updates on their shopping list.

It is also worth noting that there were technical constraints that had to be taken into consideration as a we had only one developer. The proposed short term solution was to provide a platform with the basic features so designers could complete a full design cycle with their clients.

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Task Flow

With all this information I created a task flow for a designer who wants to create a design proposal using the products in our catalog and share it with their client, receive feedback and modify it. The highlighted purple areas represent the main pain points I was going to tackle in the design solution.

Designs

User testing was an iterative process that was conducted at every milestone of the project to identify the biggest pain points in the flow. Once feedback was gathered, I would revisit the prototypes and test again.
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For the brand, I wanted to create a refreshing, minimalist and clean UI that conveyed trustworthiness and progression for future-oriented individuals, and was very easy to use.

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Design Solutions

Pain Point 1: Huge Catalogue Situation.

Design Solution: Make a product that offers a wide variety of products, and allow the designers to add products that are not in our platform.

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Pain Point 2: Users had difficulty finding the relevant products for their proposals.

Design Solution: Add a way for users to browse all product types and filter them by relevance.

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Pain Point 3: Creating a proposal, all in one platform and share it.

Design Solution: Allow the user to create proposals, edit them and share in different ways with their clients.

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Pain Point 4: Users could not edit the proposals once sent.

Design solution: Allow the designers to edit their proposals once sent, and automating the solution so the client can always see the latest version.

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Testing

After testing the prototype I discovered that older users were reluctant to learn a new tool and they weren't so happy with the concept.

But younger designers were excited and agreed to participate throughout the course of the project. They also thought that the tool was going to connect them with clients and work remotely.

After this discovery the company decided to pivot to a platform that connects interior designers with clients that were redecorating, making the process digital, easy and fun.

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Results and takeaways

Working in an early-stage startup was an extremely steep learning curve. It was an eye-opening experience that taught me a lot about being lean and knowing when and where to focus your energy and efforts.
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Some key takeaways from this project are:

• Focus on  the MVP. In a startup, you need to focus on what brings the highest value to your users, as there is only so much time and effort that you can invest.
• Don't worry about the detail. When I first started, I made the mistake of focusing on the UI, taking a step back and assessing the flows helped me reprioritize the UX.
• Focus on the problem. If you focus on the user pains that you will be solving for, it's easy to lose sight of this when you're bogged down in the day to day.

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This prototype was made with proto.io, this work was modified to comply with a NDA, all designs were recreated for this case study.