hers.
A digital-first experience aimed to empower communities of young Asian women in New Zealand. Focusing on human-centred design and leaping into brand and marketing strategy.
University Project · 2020
How can story-sharing empower and unite a community of young Asian women in New Zealand?
Timeframe
Sept - Nov 2020
Context
Many young Asian females living in New Zealand struggle to find a close community to share personal experiences and challenges with people of similar cultural backgrounds. Tackling a wicked problem experienced personally as a young Asian woman myself, alongside my peers through my role and practice as a UX designer.
Solution
The design solution is hers. a web-based platform for our users to share stories with their community. This experience is supported by building a social digital community and in-person experiences of community driven events.
Roles &
Field of Practice
Product discovery → delivery
Quantitative & Qualitative research
Marketing & brand strategy
Mobile & Web
Motion graphics
UX Writing
Special thanks
Lexi Xin (project partner) & Simon Nicholls (lecturer/facilitator)
Key Challenges
Identify and empathise with users through qualitative research methods.
The design solution to pain points with Human-Centred approach.
Implementing design outcome with campaign and marketing business strategy.
Identify and empathise with users through qualitative research methods
Data Collection
Conducted an anonymous survey for 50+ Asian women in Auckland to gain personal insights on this target demographic. This qualitative data collection was formulated by these 3 questions, maximising the potential to receive targeted responses to what was most valuable to our next step of forming potential user personas and defining our focus for our solution.
User Personas
One of three provisional personas representing potential user and target based on qualitative research data insights.
“Growing up in a western society whilst being of an Asian descent, accustomed to Asian culture at home but a different cultural experience when outside, the question on one’s identity arises at a very young age.”
From pain points to design solution with a Human-Centred approach.
Based on key insights, we formulated 3 research questions our design solution aims to answer. We got here by pain points → user needs → research questions → potential design solutions.
Iterative design from sketches → wireframing → prototype → usability testing → hi-fidelity → final design
Ideation & Prototyping
The design solution.
Utilising the Human-Centered Design methodology to develop an innovative design solution to tackle the key user pain points.
hers. a web-based platform for our users to share stories with their community. This experience is supported by building a social digital community and in-person experiences of community driven events.
“We value the importance of story sharing with encouragement, empowerment, motivation and accessibility. ”
Promotional Marketing Video Introducing hers.
Bus stop poster placed in higher Asian population demographic suburbs.
Merchandise to support community building and increase contagion.
Evaluation & Outcomes.
Working on this project felt so rewarding as it allowed me to learn more about UX design practices and the process of collaboration and prototyping. Through deep UX research processes and usability testing, I was able to get an understanding of user behaviour and patterns, though I believe if there were to be more time put into this project I'd love to user test it as a live website with the community of young woman in NZ. This would definitely allow for more in-depth insights into the emotional response of utilising our platform.
Website User Journey.
