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UX Design Exercises

To practice my product thinking skills and basic UX techniques, I have set out to complete small exercises used in product interviews.

EXERCISE #1: ROOMMATES
THE CHALLENGE:

 

A few trends of note: 54% of the world’s population live in urban communities, the average marriage age for men is 29 (up from 26 two decades ago) and for women is 27 (up from 23 in the same time period). Given these trends, city dwellers tend to spend most of their twenties living with roommates. Finding and keeping a good roommate, however, gets harder as more people swarm into cities.

 

Design a mobile product experience that appeals to millennials that makes it safe to find the ideal roommate in New York City. Design the experience from the perspective of person who is looking for a roommate as well as the one who is looking for the apartment. Once the ideal roommate is found, what else can this product do to make the roommate experience better?

 

We are looking for you to identify pain points in the “finding/keeping a good roommate” journey and to find ways to solve for those pain points.

Constraint: Stick to existing mobile capabilities of iOS and Android.

TOOLS:

 

Microsoft OneNote (Digital Pen and Paper)

DURATION:

 

3 Hours (Note: The suggested time for these exercises was one hour. For this, I wanted to take my time and do more research during the process as I am using it as a learning exercise.)

LISTS OF IDEAS:

 

EXISTING INSPIRATION:

  • Roomster

  • Zillow

  • Tinder

  • Bumble

​

FINDING/KEEPING A ROOMMATE PAIN POINTS BRAINSTORM: 

Personal Habits:

  • Messiness 

    • How much do you care about being clean?

    • Messy vs. Dirty

    • Hesitant to self-identify

    • Personal space vs. common space

  • People over (Parties, visitors)

  • Nightlife participation

  • Kitchen Use

  • Schedule overlaps

    • Work, sleep, eating

  • Pets

  • Significant others

  • Music listening habits

Apartment Preferences

  • Lease Length

  • Apt style

    • Bathrooms per bedroom

    • Number of roommates

  • Rent budget

  • Location

​

WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW:

  • Facebook Friends

  • Previous roommate recommendations

  • Instagram Follows

  • Profession and Education Verification

​

ANTICIPATED CHALLENGES:

  • Long onboarding process

  • Establishing safety and trust

  • Displaying profile elements concisely

  • Browsing intuitively

  • Keeping users after roommate is found

FEATURE IDEAS:

  • 2 Paths for onboarding

    • Looking for a roommate, Looking for a room

  • Swipe interface

  • Roommate questionnaires

    • Display answers to others

  • Chat

  • Get match %s based on questions

  • Skip listing/profile if you don't know yet

  • Social profile connection

    • See mutual friends

  • Roommate mediation once you find a match

    • Chore Charts

    • Rent Reminders

    • Shower Schedules

    • Supply Lists

    • Event Calendars

  • Suggest mediation methods based on mismatching habits

USER FLOW:

(Low Fidelity)

​

OBJECTIVES:

 

My main goal was to step away from my visual design tendencies and hone in on my product thinking skills. Additionally, I wanted to practice creating wireframes, lowFi prototypes and user flows. This challenge was inspired by this Medium article which emphasized the importance of product thinking in entry level designers, and the exercises were taken from the list the author provided.

WIREFRAMES:

(Low Fidelity)

​

EXERCISE #2: SPOTIFY ARTIST
CATALOGUE MANAGER
THE CHALLENGE:

 

Spotify has decided to give artists control of their catalogues on their platform. For the first time, artists can manage their own albums, upload their own artwork, sell specific merchandise, add lyrics to their music etc. and it’s all on their own terms.

​

Design a Mac-based editor and artist management system that allows artists to manage their presence on Spotify. The solution should account for all existing artist content on Spotify but feel free to get creative and add additional features that an artist might find useful.

​

Constraint: You are designing a Mac desktop app, you will be relegated to the OS’s abilities but you can disregard any web-related technical constraints because they don’t apply here.

TOOLS:

 

Microsoft OneNote (Digital Pen and Paper)

DURATION:

 

2 Hours (Note: The suggested time for these exercises was one hour. For this, I wanted to take my time and do more research during the process as I am using it as a learning exercise.)

LISTS OF IDEAS:

 

EXISTING INSPIRATION:

  • Spotify

  • Apple settings navigation​​

​

FEATURE IDEAS: 

  • Lyric Add

  • Connect Social Profiles

  • Song/Album Commentary

  • Question Board -> Lyric Meanings

  • Artist Favorites

  • Inspiration Artists

  • Button Color Customization

  • Website Connect

  • Music Videos

  • Additional Photos

  • Location Artist calls home

  • Listener Statistics

  • Favorite covers of their songs

 

ANTICIPATED CHALLENGES:

  • Intuitive navigation

  • Hick's Law (keep options low)

  • Keep Spotify trends​

EXISTING ARTIST ITEMS:

Top:

  • Artist Name

  • Header photo

Tabs:

  • Overview

    • Top Songs

    • Latest release

    • Singles

    • Featured On

    • Artist Playlists

    • Similar Artists

    • Merch

  • Related Artists

  • About

    • Monthly Listeners

    • Biography

    • Where people listen

    • Discovered On (Playlist features)

  • Concerts

    • Listeners Location

    • Concert list

      • Buy tickets

Other:

  • Artist Radio

  • Follow + Share

USER JOURNEY:

(Low Fidelity)

​

WIREFRAMES:

(Low Fidelity)

​

EX 1: ROOMMATES
EX 2: SPOTIFY
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