Desborough Dragons
Product Design | Design Thinking
One of the projects for my Master’s course was a group project to help update Desborough Dragon’s website to be easier for their existing and new customers to use. In this project, we used the design process to help develop a a hi-fi prototype that would fulfill the customers and owner’s needs. For this project, the client awarded best prototype to our group.
Client Background
Desborough Dragons is a new Kung Fu Club based in Desborough, Northamptonshire. The club was started by the Sole Instructor (and Business Owner, Mike Malloy). As well as operating the club, Mike is also a schoolteacher. Desborough Dragons first started up by offering after-school kung-fu classes to primary school children, as well as school holiday classes. The club has since expanded to offer children’s kung-fu classes (for children aged 6 - 11), and adult classes (for people aged 12 upwards). Customers pay a Membership fee of £32 per month which provides the income to the club. In return for the membership fee, customers can attend up to two classes a week.
Client’s Needs
Desborough Dragons has been using social media platforms, online directories, and 3rd party companies to advertise their services. They do not currently have a website and so their business need is to create an online presence to place them on par with other competitor’s online offerings in the industry. The focus is to create an intuitive user experience, and to create a website that directs users straight to the core offerings.
Customer Research
Parents
This is the main customer group. Analytics data reveals this group are women between the ages of 20–35. They make the decisions regarding which after school clubs their children attend. Research also revealed that this group of customers tend to work part-time around their children’s school hours.
Potential Customers
Analytics data reveals that this group are largely males between the ages of 30 – 50. Research also revealed that this group of customers tend to work full-time and have a general interest in martial arts.
Existing Customers
Analytics data reveals that this group are largely males between the ages of 30–50. Research also revealed that this group of customers tend to work full-time, regularly train in Kung-Fu and have a specific interest in Kung-Fu activities at a National Level. They are typically university educated and work in professional industries.
Defining Users
After looking over the customer profiles and conducting research on the demographics, three personas were developed for each type of customer, which were Jessica, Adrian, and Steve. We defined this findings through personas, empathy maps, and user journey maps.
Persona Cards - defining target users, their frustrations, and goals
Empathy maps - identifying what target users would feel when using the website
User journey maps - determine what the steps to accomplish their goal and functions are needed to complete
Defining User Needs
This helped us define what their goals, needs, and frustrations were to help us further determine the solutions that would fit these users best. User needs statements were created for each to identify their problem or need, why it was relevant to them, and how it can be solved.
From this, it lead us to further determine what the layout and what features would be needed on the updated website.
Wireframes and Prototyping
Finally after ideating and concluding to what our users needed, it was noted that they needed a website that allowed them easily view the information they need and be able to easily contact and inquire about joining Desborough Dragons. Along with this, the client wanted to be sure that their two weeks free promotion would be visible for new customers. Another requirement from the client is that it would incorporate the colors black and yellow to reflect their branding.
To start in developing the layout and features for the updated Desborough Dragons, we first started out by drawing wireframes to get an idea of how the prototype should be. Wireframes were created for the Homepage, About, Classes, and Contact pages. A wireframe was also created for the Sign Up, which we made to be a pop up, instead of a page at this point.
After reviewing these wireframes, we identified the changes to create a semi working prototype to present to the client. We knew that we wanted to keep the same information layout as it was clear and easy to find with no confusion. Though, we decided to change the Sign Up pop up to then be a button in the navigation which would lead users to submit information to be able to join Desborough Dragons, and then a pop up would appear when this information was submitted.
With this prototype, we were able to help the client give users a better experience when trying to find information regarding the who Desborough Dragons is, the instructors, the classes, and how they are able to join and reach them. Overall, this project helped us determine how to identify and solve multiple users needs and problems and how to reach a successful end point as done with Desborough Dragons.
Please see below for the Figma file. :)