Build Flow is a positive disruptor, custom-built for the construction industry, that uses the latest technology and automation trends to challenge the way we build.
Build Flow is an innovative startup with an inspiration to revolutionize construction industry with automation. As the sole UX/UI designer, I have designed and documented complete research on design components of this project to aid in to create consistent products by covering key elements such as design standards, psychology, and principles to help both developers and designers.
Business Background: Build Flow is founded to simplify and automate construction process. The goal is to streamline each phase of the construction process, and seamlessly moving information between the council, companies, utilities, and workers.
Project Purpose: The goal of this project is launch the brand, website and establish a stand in the market based
Challenges: My biggest challenge was to bring the user onboard with a new idea that never existed in the Australian market before and to show them that the idea is reliable and trustworthy.
I designed these personas based on the assumptions of the stakeholders, and further checked against actual data. They present an opportunity to articulate the target audience, their needs, and behaviors. They ultimately represent what the stakeholders think our user group or target audience are like.
The two main user groups that will be involved in our website and technology would be the Individual home builders known as Owner-builders and Project Managers from small-medium construction firms.
A user story is short, specific and goal-oriented. It is a one-sentence statement that tends to convey the needs of the user in the simplest form possible.
"As a.... " Home Builder
"I want... " support to take up documentation and approval processing
"So That... " I can focus more on my dream house design
"As a.... " Project Manager
"I want... " quick jump-in support in construction tasks
"So That... " my team can deliver projects on time
The ideal user story - In line with the Don Norman's three levels of design appeal, we first need to attract user through visceral level which influences the user's subconscious emotions through visual appeal and aesthetics of the website and our portal followed by the behavioral level where the user is able to achieve their goals through our portal through easy service requests with minimum of difficulty and finally tap into the reflective level where the user's goals are fully accomplished with the help of our service and places the product in the user's wider environment by sharing her/his success story to others on how it enhanced their life.
What is the product's primary feature, and the how is what defines the interaction. These two processes are what you usually see in products. But the *why* – why are we doing this? – is something I think is incredibly crucial for the experience. Why are we interacting in the first place? Why is the user doing an action? Why do the user need this?
The goals that users have, as well as the emotions that surround them, shape the entire experience. As a result, consider the needs you serve. This principle is usually implemented by beginning with What, How, an last the Why, but I believe the why should come first.
The why, and then think of a way to transport this to the user through what and how. I believe they why is more open-ended and hence gives you more context of use from the user perspective and widens the scope of the product.
Why - To help our users by automating their boring time-consuming construction process
What - Through our self-serve portal to place easy service request
How - By providing project details through simple intuitive forms
As this is our first step towards Branding, I designed a value proposition for our intended customer group need and how our product aligns or can be positioned with their interests. I think this can be achieved by tapping into the users’ attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and how they want to feel, so as to elicit such emotional responses.
I believe it is important for a brand to create emotional connections between their customers (and potential customers) plays a key role in how the user feels, interacts, and uses the product for long.
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As our main goal is to land our first client, our scope will be how the user first interacts and knows about our brand. To understand the user better and learn more about the issues he/she might face, I created two user journey maps; one where the user ends up signing up on our page and other where he quits.
I developed a site map to define a simple navigation and essential pages for the user to understand what the brand is, how we work and how to contact us. I created solutions page for the intended user group to access the services customized to them and products page for general audience in the page.
I formulated a task flow diagram for the steps that the user's go through the process of their project. This covers the whole process from the user's initial service request to final project handover to complete the request. This process involves several technical aspects including council approvals, safety compliance, hiring and manager contractors for requests, collaboration with builders and scheduling.
The first step was to design logo and build a style guide to start with the launch. As our company represents innovation in construction through technology, the logo colors need to represent ideas such as bold, visionary, trustworthy and strong. The main factors taken into consideration for this are age, gender and regional/cultural. The goal is to capture the attention and curiosity of the user to grow and make them understand our idea. As per research, three major colors have been chosen to align with the requirements:
Similar to colour psychology, I researched on psychology behind different fonts and typography to use in the project. The chosen typography is Source Sans Pro and usage of lowercase letters. Tall and medium letters will be utilized with extended type because:
Vision Statement: Revolutionize construction through technology.
Keywords for logo - Innovation Revolution Construction Software Home Builders
Subcategory keywords - idea, circuit, brain, signal, laptop
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It was a very steep learning curve for to working for a startup during the launch stage. We had highly constrained environment with regards to budget and time. It was a life-changing experience that taught me a lot about being lean and knowing when and where to concentrate my energy, efforts and time.
Journey maps gave us a crucial outlook of the user's approach to our product, and we were able to rethink and redesign a lot of features after recognizing those opportunities from the mapping.
As our key focus at this stage was creating an MVP for launching the website, and as a result, it's critical to concentrate on the features that will provide the most value to your users. A strict plan and strategy to launch our MVP helped a lot to deal with scope creep and out-of-scope requests that could derail the project and ensures that a high-quality product is delivered on schedule.
After development, the iteration always continues. Design is a never-ending process of refining the end-user experience every now and then to stay up to date with user's current expectations of the products as their needs are ever evolving so stay on track and find ways to stay connected with the users.
