Shiva is a product and 3D designer bringing ideas to life and the intersection of digital design and physical products. 3D Designer at 404-GEN and currently based in Brooklyn NY.
UTYPE: The App to help you build your next Keyboard
Timeline: Jan - May 2021
Team: Shiva V
Role: UX Designer, Visual Designer, Interaction Designer
Skills: Figma, Figjam,
The Problem:
While most people use a keyboard everyday, they may be using a product they do not enjoy. Keyboard users should invest in their tools and buy better products for themselves. Unfortunately, most users become overwhelmed by the choices and abandon their options and go back to their poor performing keyboards.
Who Would Use This?
The target audience are individuals who slightly more tech savvy and are required to use their computer at least 4 hours a day either for work or play. Building a keyboard is a monetary investment and so most users would be in their 20s to 30s employees in the workforce based on their knowledge of technology and income.
I’ve recently switched to full time content creation, but my current accessories are currently lacking for someone who uses them everyday.
“I’m starting to feel the aches and pains of my 9-5 job. I’ve been looking into changing things up for my ergonomics and to feel better while I work.
The Solution
UTYPE is the app created to solve this dilemna in the niche mechanical keyboard community. The app hopes to help users buy better products for themselves and their workspace.
Its purpose is to:
-
Help newcomers understand how a mechanical keyboard works.
-
Assist them in purchasing their new keyboard or parts for one.
-
Highlight the mechanical keyboard community.
Reaching the Audience
When designing the app, I wanted to ensure that there were some core features included that are typical in apps such as PC building sites. I aimed to combine a builder feature as well as a community site so that users could find other builds for inspiration
Laying out the Design
I began to wireframe the site by sticking to a system where users can easily understand the important aspects of user builds from a simple thumbnail. I also began playing with the builder feature. With my first iterations I started by stepping the user through the process, but opted to stick with a checklist style builder to make it quicker.
The Visual Design
I stuck to a simple visual scheme in order to highlight the images that would be showcasing the variety of keyboard parts on the app. I wanted to make sure that the colors and font were only necessary to point out important information rather than be the highlight of the app.
Final Product
This final iteration is the culmination of months of research and refining the complicated process of condensing tons of information into a digestable package. It also promotes users to look to others for guidance and help in the process of learning to build a keyboard.
Takeaways and Next Steps
UTYPE was my first holistic approach to the UX process. It taught me a lot as I went from idea to full prototype.
Few of the key lessons learned:
- Researching individuals, as well as groups, is important and one
is not more important than the other.
- Having users test at each stage of wireframing and prototyping can help to save time on redesigning entire aspects of a product.
- Always
refer back to the personas as they guide the design process at every
step of the way.
Next Steps:
- Add more features to the prototype.
- Prototype desktop companion features that would work in tandem with the app.
- Add more options to sort the lists and to provide alternative methods of providing quality info hierarchy.