Research is the most important part of the UX process which includes app reviews for the competitors and the app redesign, competitor analysis, and user interviews. Along with these three important parts of the preliminary redesign process also considering the use of empathy mapping for user experience and personas will become helpful as we begin to understand the project and client needs. For my mobile app redesign research for Poshmark I utilized all of these techniques to effectively understand the users wants and needs.
Product reviews are quite simple, researching all the reviews of the app you are redesigning and the reviews of the competitor apps. Document the findings. My mobile app redesign research brought me to Poshmark. I found a lot UX/UI issues through my own visual experience but also through the app reviews. Although it comes with a 4.7 out of 5 stars there are a variety of issues that need to be addressed. Along side researching Poshmark’s reviews it was also important to understand their competitors. I researched Vinted and ThredUp which are their major competitors.
Competitive analysis is another important part of the research process because it is about understanding the competitors, who they are, what they’re about, and how we as UX designers can implement their strengths into our own design and app structure. Learning from our competitors is a huge part of becoming a successful product. To put it simply competitive analysis means:
“Identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and weaknesses relative to those of your own product or service.”
Chandan Mishra, A Product Designer’s Guide to Competitive Analysis
For my research I decided to look at a few of Poshmark’s competitors to see what they are doing well and not well so I can gage what would be the best approach to take for my own redesign. Below are a screenshots of the competitor apps for Vinted and ThredUp. I documented my observations about these apps and how they are both visually successful. With my documentation I observed how similar the two competitors alone looked. I knew this would be a helpful insight into where I want and need to gear my redesign.
User interviews are a crucial part of the research process. UX designers generally want to get an outside opinion on the apps they are designing and the competitors of those apps. The user interviews can be helpful in examining the user experience, the usability of the product, or understand demographic or ethnographic data for the purposes of user persona development. This week I was able to add to my research with an important asset, the users or potential users. My interviews gave me exceptional insight into functionality of the app or the lack there of. I asked a variety of questions that would help me gage their usability and overall opinions on the user friendliness of the app itself.
“User interviews can be a great way to extract information from user experience understanding, usability understanding and ideation.”
Interaction Design Foundation
Empathy mapping is a great way to understand your user through what they say, think, do, and how they feel. The typical format of an empathy map is broken down by 4 quadrants including says, thinks, does, feels with the user as the center (see below). Empathy mapping is a useful tool for quickly understanding user attitudes and behaviors.
“Visualizing user attitudes and behaviors in an empathy map helps UX teams align on a deep understanding of end users. The mapping process also reveals any holes in existing user data.”
Sarah Gibbons, Empathy Mapping: The First Steps in Design Thinking
User personas are just about the final piece for completing well thought out user research. A persona can be a helpful tool in understanding your customer and what their goals and needs are for the product. The persona is an accurate representation of all the customer’s expectations for the product. I included a variety of information for my persona that would allow all parties involved in the app design process to understand the users. I included basic demographics, bio, personality, goals, frustrations, and motivation.
I included all my research for my app redesign process in one document including product reviews, interviews, competitor analysis, empathy map, and persona. All the documentation for my research can be assessed here.
Mikayla Lovering 