Expert

Background

To address the lack of direct services for users looking for expert advice online, I decided to create a platform to connect knowledge hungry users with qualified professionals.

The resulting product is a service that I call Expert.

Expert is a service that can enable anyone, anywhere to instantly chat with an expert in virtually any field. Although there is a plethora of information available online, finding professional personalized help that you can trust proves to be a difficult task.

The Problem

How can we help individuals reach professionals

for expert advice in a reliable and easy way?

The Process

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The Process -

I utilized the User Centered Design process to place user preferences and needs before anything else. Fueling our design with user research, I was able to rapidly prototype platform designs, refine with usability tests, and develop a high-fidelity prototype.

  • Understand

  • Research

  • Ideate

  • Refine

  • High Fidelity Design

Understand

Competitive Analysis

The first step I took was to perform a SWOT analysis on competitors to see current market trends on expert advice platforms.

Research

User Interviews

The best way to better understand potential users is to interview them!

Affinity Mapping

After conducting the interviews and collecting the recordings, I used affinity mapping to categorize the data into common themes.

User personas journeys & flows

Insights

Users look for experts when doing complicated tasks that require a specialty such as computers, medical advice, legal advice.

Users find visual and personal advice the most helpful.

Users have difficulty with online learning when it is detached and not specific.

When looking for advice online, users prioritize credibility and easy use.

With data from potential users on hand, I was able to create user personas of individuals that can take advantage of the Expert platform.

Ideate

Wireframes and

Information Architecture

Utilizing user preferences and analyzing the informational structure of industry leading expert advice platforms, I created the navigational pathways that would be most predictable and easy to use.

Now that we have the foundational structure of the pages and features of the application, I created low-fidelity wireframes to start the prototyping process.

Throughout the user interviews, one of the topics that were brought up the most was credibility. Creating trust by making easy to understand navigational paths and features will be important in reducing friction in new users.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Refine

Usability Testing

After developing a mid-fidelity prototype, I tested the navigation and features of the wireframes with 6 different participants.

Test Overview

Application: Expert

Time: 10-20 minutes

Method: Moderated Remote

Equipment: Recording by PC via zoom

Key Insights

Poor Focus

Small text makes it difficult to focus on the important topics.

Lack of colors makes the pages disengaging. Users felt they had to search for features instead of being drawn to them.

Confusing Navigation

66% of users felt lost when navigating through the “Expert List” and “Expert List Booking” screens.

Before Usability Testing

After Usability Testing

High Fidelity Design

Final Prototype

Takeaways

As the lead UX designer in the development of the Expert platform, I was able to learn more about the importance of user testing throughout the design process. Placing user needs at the core of the design guides the platform into an unpredictable yet necessary path.

In the future, I would love to explore different types of user research such as guerilla testing and gather more quantitative data as the platform develops, such as user analytics and clickstream tracking. Currently, most of the user research is geared toward potential users/consumers who are looking for expert advice. To take it further, I would like to conduct user research and testing for potential Experts that may offer their services on the platform. That would include developing exclusive features for the Experts only.

Being able to collaborate with multiple UX professionals throughout development proved to be an invaluable experience, receiving advice and guidance from people who are actively participating in high level design. This not only informs the path of my design, but allows me to analyze the thoughts and workflows of other professionals.

Other considerations are features that have not yet been added, such as payment options and voice/video calling. These features are highly personal and the Expert platform will require a method of establishing more trust and credibility before introducing these features to users.