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Inkoko is a project of mine and being under development. I imagined an app dedicated to tattoo fans and artists who would like to meet each other. More than a directory, this is a good promotion tool for the artists and a way for tattoo-aficionado to discover new styles. This app would make possible the visualisation of the tattoo of your dream on your own skin via Augmented Reality (AR).
As this is a totally new concept, I undertook some User Experience Research to be sure I’m focusing on the right problem while developing the app.
As this project is purely focused on the User Experience, I approached my methodology as follow.
Who said they were linear steps? This is an iterative process and there are a lot of back and forwards in it.
Such a project couldn’t be properly carried out without organised, detailed and focused research beforehand. It's time to set up the research goals, identify the target market, the research methods and anticipate from the get-go.
First of all I have to define the 3 followings:
I conducted a customer survey via Survey Monkey among 50 people to understand a bit more the behaviour of the people wanted to get inked.
I then conducted a customer interview to 3 different tattoo artists (all coming from different countries).
To design a proper solution with Inkoko:
• I defined clear foundations first.
• I then created an Empathy Map with 3 different personas - based on my interviews - to understand who are my users.
What are their deeper needs. What kind of problems are they facing in their journey to tattoo/get a tattoo.
• To have some reference points, I created a detailed biography for each of those personas.
• A useful method: I created a storyboard for those personas. I wanted to understand how do they interact with the tattoo topic.
• What better way of gaining a competitive advantage than by analysing the landscape of the existing tattoo app market. I identified the 3 main tattoo apps and carried out a SWOT analysis, analysed the content, the design, etc. I then gathered all my findings and placed it in a “Features matrix”. All the benchmark analysis is here.
I made some unexpected discoveries and it helped me then to define several problem statements. To help me finding some trails for the “ideation” step, it’s useful for me to define several Points of View (POV) and How Might We (HMW) questions.
We are coming to the most interesting stage: the "ideation". It's time to choose what will be the core business and the main concept of the app. Now that I know who will use my app and what their problems are I decided to use the famous "Crazy 8" method to know how to solve them. It's a fast sketching exercise that challenges people to sketch 8 ideas in 8 minutes.
I repeated the operation twice, to come up with even more ideas. I then focused on 2 features : Match Cards & Augmented Reality. This will now define the main concept of my app.
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Now that I know that Inkoko will be focused on a "match" cards system and will include Augmented Reality (AR), I can imagine what the users flows of my app will be.
Before even designing the Interface of the app, I first wanted to test a simple landing page. This page would explain the purpose of the app. It’s a good way to test the understanding of the product amongst potential future users. But first let’s have fun and create first a prototype of what the logo of Inkoko could be!
Hello Inkoktopus! Let’s design a very simple landing page now (it should be almost Lo-Fi). Would people understand the concept and be motivated by the product?
After viewing the landing page, how well do the potential users understand the product? Of all of the possible proposed features, which do they feel they would use the most? In their eyes, which are the most useful and the most important features? I carried out this test amongst 10 people and analysed the results.
Inkoko is near and dear to my heart. This is a project I’m truly believing in. For that reason, I’ll collaborate with another Product Designer from London and do a longer and deeper research. All of this Research done here comforted me in the idea that such a product could be used by many people. I’ll work in pair and, after 2 or 3 months of Research, will start to create a Minimum Loveable Product (MLP) that could passionate a small amount of users : the “addicts” and the “artists”. Wish me good luck!
