User Experience Workshops 

Discovery Workshop

To further understand the challenges that Make needed to overcome and to create actionable next steps, we began with a Discovery Workshop. This interactive workshop allowed us to work collaboratively with the team at Make to establish clear priorities within their organisation which would help them in better understanding their community and how to communicate their personality. Using a range of discussion-led activities, the Discovery Workshop not only defined key business objectives, but also began to create correlations with user stories and perspectives, developing a shared vision in the transition to the next stage of the project. 

Storyboarding Workshop

Using the initial data and insights that we collected from the primary workshop, we then delivered a Storyboarding Workshop. This supported Make in their milestones of providing a better experience for their community and allowed their values and personality to shine. Hosting this engaging session encouraged us to work collaboratively with Make to understand the journey of the user. 

By discovering how our findings align with the needs of the user, we were able to reach clear solutions and outcomes. Utilising storyboards at this stage meant that we were able to map out the important components of the website, whilst gaining a more visual and dynamic knowledge of the user, providing both teams with a more complex understanding of the Make community and how to reflect their needs. 

Customer Journey Mapping

Audience Personas

In the next phase, we focused on audiences; what do they expect when interacting with Make? How can we meet their needs? To do this, we made audience personas, representing the different types of users in the Make community. A range of factors are considered when creating both primary and secondary personas, including how often each distinct group may use the website, what they require from the website and what their goals, attitudes and concerns may be. This provided both our team and the team at Make a bigger picture view of their audiences, allowing us to gain an empathic understanding of the community.

Customer Journey Maps 

After gaining a comprehensive understanding of Make’s audience, we needed to decipher how each group might move through the website and what they are aiming to achieve. This helped Make to develop clearer messaging alongside a value-led website experience. Customer journey maps helped us to clearly define and reach goals for many varied audiences that might interact with the website. 

Wireframes

With a bunch of helpful information to hand, we were able to create insight-driven wireframes. These wireframes helped us to bring to life the desires, needs and goals for all of our different audiences. The wireframes provided us with a visual understanding of the pages and how this would develop functionality throughout the design stage. 

Usability Testing

We carried out usability testing to ensure that the design process led to an improved user experience. We tested on various groups including members of Matchstick Creative and Make CIC teams, introducing all participants to the newly developed audience personas and evaluating how users interact with the model. This open, collaborative approach produced outstanding insights and results. We addressed the overall goal of defining clear priorities, audiences and creating an intuitive user experience.