Kraft

An iOS app for designing and producing customized stickers for special events. 

Project Type: End to end app design + branding
Roles: Sole UX/UI designer + UX researcher + brand designer
Industry: Sticker, Print, Art/Design, Customization
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Miro, Zoom, Google Sheets

DISCOVER

Empathize | Competitive Analysis | Secondary Research | Interviews

Why stickers?

The sticker industry is growing!

People want to express things in a creative way!

Stickers are a cost effective way to spread messages and promote ideas!

The Problem

Although many companies profit from only offering their sticker services,
they lack mobile friendliness when it comes to design capabilities.

That’s why I have decided to create an app to make it super easy to customize and order stickers on your phone.

Let's make a web-based process mobile friendly.

Competitor Analysis

Strengths:

✅  digital mockup before purchase

✅  better customer service

✅  design requests offering unique customization and design capabilities

✅  pre-designed templates

✅  diverse seller market

✅  design resources 

Gaps in the process:

❌  lacks designing capabilities

❌  multi-platform process

❌  unpredictable estimated production time 

❌  overwhelming amount of design choices

❌  no design direction when it comes to starting a design

❌  no customization options

Talking to Users

Understand pain points and opportunities customers experience as they attempt to make stickers with current processes.

Interviews

I interviewed 5 people who have ordered stickers from various companies and 3 additional people who have ordered a customized product for an event. 

DEFINE

Synthesizing Research | Affinity Mapping | Personas | HMW | POV Statements

Insights from Interviews

What I thought would be useful for users

• Find ways to streamline the proofing process to avoid delays in production.
• Discover what features and tools users prefer to use for customizing stickers so they can customize stickers from scratch.
  

What user’s actually wanted

• Users are frustrated by the customization process because of the amount of steps it takes to customize.
• Users like complete customization options but they also want templates so they don't have to start from scratch!

Personas

Based off of interviews, I created two personas to represent the two types of identities I wanted to focus on while designing a new tool to design and order stickers. 

The Maid of Honor's POV

Sandra, Maid of Honor

Age 25 | Minneapolis, MN

Planning a bachelorette party for her best friend.

Goals
Create a memorable experience and lasting memories
Celebrate friendship
Make something unique so the bride feels special

Needs
User friendly interface
Variety of options
Customization features

Pain Points
Budget
Meeting design expectations
Time constraints

The Event Planner's POV

Kate, Event Planner

Age 31 | Minneapolis, MN

Organizing a small, upscale event at a local brewery to celebrate the brewery’s anniversary and showcase their best selling craft brews.

Goals
Promote the event creatively
Facilitate networking
Enhance branding and leave a lasting impression

Needs
Incorporate brewery’s brand
Versatile customization options
Easy editing tools

Pain Points
Budget
Effectively promote event
Design cohesion between other marketing materials

How might we simplify the customization process so users are not overwhelmed or intimidated by the amount of steps it takes to design a sticker?

 +

How might we offer templates to users without restricting their customization?

DEVELOP

Idea Generation | Prioritization | Information Architecture | User Flows | LoFi Sketch

Targeting a Niche Market

After talking to users and identifying their needs, I discovered a niche market within the sticker community. User's who are looking to personalize a small event often do not have any background in design but want to make something special and personalized.

How might we create something helpful for someone who doesn't know where to start but still wants to design something custom?

Prioritization

Feature Roadmap

While researching competitors and gathering information from potential users, I put together a feature set as a guideline for building the application.

One of the most important features listed is the preview, as it will show the user's final design and reveal realistic expectations for how their design will look printed.

Template options is another feature that will be important for users so they have a starting point for their custom sticker design.

User Flows

Task Flows

I started making flows for typical tasks that appear during the sticker ordering process. 

Design a Sticker

This task flow was helpful for me to consider how I can group design elements and overall simplify the process.

Reorder a Design

Looking at competitor task flows

I looked at competitor's to see how they are currently designing and what feature's could be helpful to user's in my design flows. 

Brand Development

Branding | Logo Design | Typography | Component Library | Accessibility

Inspiration

Creating the logo

Logo Iteration 🤔

Brand Name

Logo design reflects the ability to customize & kraft a personal touch to their small parties or events. 🎉

Shapes

Shapes inspired by sticker shapes. 

Color Palette

inspired by a vibrant party vibe, vintage print, back to the basics, earthy, paper style. 

Typography

Space Mono, my chosen typeface, modernizes storytelling while retaining the classic charm of typewriters. Its blend of contemporary aesthetics and nostalgic appeal adds a unique touch to customized stickers, enhancing the essence of every celebration. 

Accessibility Check

Color Contrast

Every color combination of the brand palette was tested for color contrast to ensure all combinations used met WCAG’s AA contrast criteria.

Color Blind Safe

The brand color palette was checked for possible color-blind conflicts.

Design System

Design system showing icons, buttons, and components. View the design system/UI kit via Figma.

DELIVER

Interaction Design | Feedback | Iteration | HiFi Prototypes

Feedback & Iterations

Priority Revisions

1. Better descriptions. Adding titles and better descriptions to each text field.
2. Clearer selection. Users clicked around before selecting some of the options.
3. Adjusted text boxes & changed font for better readability.
4. Changed navigation style to look more clickable.
5. Changed "background color" to "stroke color" in text customization.
   

Hifi Wireframes

How does Kraft address the needs of users?

The Problem

Users wanted to design custom stickers but didn't want to create a design from scratch. 

The Solution

Kraft is an app that helps users design stickers from pre-designed templates offering users starting point before customizing their sticker design. 

Prototype

Hi-fi prototype on a mobile phone showing the custom design screens.

REFLECT

Next Steps

Connect with more users within the niche market and conduct more user testing!

Build out generic templates for users and test customization process.

Research what type of designs would be most useful for users. 

Key Takeaways

Take breaks. Take a break and come back to your ideas with fresh eyes. You might see a new perspective!

Keep all your work in one place. I found it to be extremely helpful to keep EVERYTHING in Figma, even if its just pasting in a copy of a document. It's much easier to keep track of research and be thorough with details.

Let's work together!