Helping a Startup Company Identifying UX Issues for their AI Landscape Inspiration Tool
What's Neighborbrite?
Neighborbrite is a startup company that provides an innovative AI-powered landscape inspiration tool. The users can get landscaping design inspiration by uploading their yard images, selecting areas to work on, and preferred style. It also offers a premium customize featurethat allows users to further customize their yards.
Find usability issues and user needs through user testing. Make recommendations so that Neighborbrite can enhance usability and product value.
Discussing with the CEO of Neighborbrite, we found they had the following questions.
Tight schedule during the holiday season.
The major difficulty of this project was time constraints. We only had 5 weeks, including Thanksgiving week. We overcome this difficulty by managing the timeline and tasks within our group and client.
We tested with the client's target user group.
Method
Testing Scope
We focused on the mobile experience because the majority of the customers access from mobile phones as indicated by the client.
Participants
Homeowner with a backyard and interested in landscaping
or
We set the participant recruitment criteria based on the actual user group and recruited 8 participants from personal network.
Clear, natural scenario & tasks without description of actual steps.
We prepared the scenario and tasks based on our client's goal and our scopes. We made them clear but not too descriptive.
Scenario
Imagine that you have recently moved into a new home with a decent-sized yard. You are excited about the prospect of landscaping this space to make it more enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing. However, you are not sure where to start and are looking for inspiration and ideas.
Tasks
In each task, we ask users to do the following. Full information on the task is available here
1. Upload image
2. Select style & generate landscape inspiration images
3. Navigate to customize feature as a free user
4. Navigate to plant info
5. Use the customize Feature as a premium user
Make testing seamless with pre-testing instruction & preparation
Here is the main flow of the test. We asked users to download Zoom and a sample yard image that we used for testing in advance to make the setup process seamless.
Make testing seamless by creating moderator's script and practice using it.
We also prepared the testing materials. I was in charge of creating the moderator’s script. In the script, I made sure to include how to answer the possible technical questions because we connect to our participants remotely. We also practiced through the pilot testing.
Customize feature is difficult to use. Users need more info about the product.
We created an affinity diagram and calculated the success rates of tasks to analyze the testing result. As a result of analysis, we got the following findings. We made 4 recommendations to address the major issues.
Generate Inspiration
Customize Inspiration
Let users know what the product offers.
5 out of 8 participants wished they wanted to know what the website offers before signing up/logging in. The demo video that appeared on the home page helps to understand the product but users need to scroll to access it, therefore it is difficult to find.
We recommended making the demo video more discoverable by embedding a “watch demo” button that automatically scrolls down to the video. Also, we recommended shifting the login process later in the flow so that users can know what the service offers and feel more comfortable about signing up/logging in.
Give users clues on possible customization to get started.
The customize feature is an AI feature where users can type any keywords they want to include/exclude in their yard inspiration and generate personalized yeard images. Free-text input boxes give users significant flexibility, but some users had difficulty in understanding what to type in.
In this solution, we aimed to provide constraints of operation to guide users. While it is impossible to list all the options available for customization, we thought filters may give users examples and help them understand how to use the feature. During the client presentation, we also provided the alternative recommendation to use the autocomplete field.
Encourage free users to tap "customize" button by improving UI design.
Free users can check the details of what the premium customize feature offers by clicking a customize button on the style selection page. However, the “crown” icon discouraged them from tapping it. Also, the customize button is next to the dark green re-imagine button so users tend to skip checking the detail page of the customize feature.
In order to solve the issue above, we recommended removing the crown icon and promoting the customize button in the hierarchy by changing the color of the re-imagine button.
Make the customize feature description for free users more informative.
The “Pro feature ” page explains the overview of the customized feature for free users. We discovered the participants misunderstood that only four elements are accessible to customize due to its page design. In addition, some of them stated the fixed purchase button made it clear that this feature required a payment, and discouraged further exploration.
We recommended adding a hint to show there are more elements available to customize. Also, we recommended the buy button be unfixed at the bottom because we found our users stopped browsing the page when the payment button was always displayed and emphasized by being fixed at the bottom.
Our client was satisfied with our reports and deployed one of the recommendations within a week.
Finally, we made a presentation with the client to share our results and recommendations. Also, we had a Q&A session and answered the client’s questions.
“This is extremely useful. This is exactly what I was hoping to see.”
- Luis, the CEO of Neighborbrite
The client expressed satisfaction with our presentation and actively considered integrating our recommendations into their roadmap. Notably, the recommendation 1 (adding a watch demo button) was deployed within a week after the presentation.
Next time, I want to discuss and explore the technical aspect of the design more.
This project was my first client project for the UX design realm and was a great opportunity. Through the experience of moderating testing sessions, I learned that preparation and practice are key for seamless sessions. Also, the experience of helping clients motivated me to further exploration of the UX field.
Our testing sessions took more time than we estimated because setting up mobile phones in remote sessions was complicated, and it was difficult for moderators to assist participants compared to in-person ones. To manage time better, I would like to include more buffer time for the session and narrow down testing scopes in the future.
Also, I recognized the importance of considering technical feasibility, especially for features with advanced technologies like AI. In future projects, I would like to have more discussions with stakeholders about technical feasibility and also stay updated on the latest technological trends.
