2021
Photos are one of the first things we rescue during a fire!
A Brief history
Photography
Photography is the art of capturing a special moment in time. It is the only physical resource we collect as a memory, and one of the first items we try to rescue during a fire!
My focal point will be reviving the design of a photographer’s website and assisting the photographer with creating a brand identity for his work, to expand his network, find new ways to market his work to strategically build a small business.
About
At the age of 12 years old Joel Williams happened to capture his first image of his grandmother at the Ruby falls the home to the tallest and deepest underground water in the USA. Six years ago, I was fortunate to meet Joel and his family during my move to Georgia, and from that time onwards I happened to explore his amazing talent as a photographer.
There are very good photographers, but few are extraordinary. The challenge is to find a connection between supply and demand, and how to stand out as a photographer in the current market.
Joel is an original photographer who had worked on learning photography by taking several courses at different Universities while he was engaged with his full-time job as an industrial engineer, his eagerness to learn and improve, constantly work on upgrading his photography tools, and having a creative talent with an eye of an artist for capturing moments in time puts him at a distinguished position as a photographer.
Goal
Today, photography business isn’t easy to sustain, especially that everyone holds cameras in their pockets and snap everything and anything they see, then share their post with the world.
The market is saturated, and online accessibility had opened the horizon to increase an opportunity for creativity to be showcased.
These are the high-level goals and objectives:
Redesign the current website
Create a responsive website
New branding
New marketing strategies
My role: UX Designer
Team: N/A
Problem Solving
Problem: Old school photographers find it hard to get new clients as the new age had opened multiple opportunities for people to take photos and rank themselves as professional photographers.
My friend Joel Williams is one of the those hurting photographers, he had recently moved to a new state in USA and finds he is hard to immediately connect with new people to promote his talent as a retired senior photographer and mentor.
He also has a current website that he never shares with his clients as he keeps on postponing to update, and refreshing his website.
Solution: The fact that I am a good friend of Joel who I happened to know during his stay in my neighborhood and the multiple times he had taken free photo shoots of me, I had decided to take this opportunity and help him with revamping his website, get his name out on social media, and at the same time to creating a real project interaction for my UX|UI capstone project.
Note: The new website launch will be executed after my graduation from DeaignLab bootcamp.
Users
My users were from different parts of the world mainly from the USA, each user or participant had a unique colorful experience with photography.
I focused on prioritizing a stream connection between me and my client's customers and students for my 1:1 interviews to better understand the value of photography in their own mindset, and to touch on their emotional experience with Joel Williams as; #1 A Photographer, and #2 A Photography Mentor.
Age group: 30-75
Stakeholders
A compassionate photographer
I have been working with clients and customers for over 15+ years, and Joel is one of the most relaxed and easy going clients I have worked with so far.
Creative people tend to be more aligned when it comes to open conversation about art, photography, music and other creative topics, they may not be in total agreement, but for sure my experience with Joel made my work less tedious, more exciting and full of fun conversations.
When I asked him: "How come you are so easy to deal with?"
He answered: "I have full trust in you and your talent, I know I am in good hands."
I held several over the phone meetings with my shareholder to understand his pain points, his goals, and his wishes. I was able to always get a great feedback from him, and was able to connect with his students and clients that were also of a great help during my work on the information architecture phase.
Click to view Joel William's current website:
Research
A saturated market
The desk research revolved on finding other local photographers, and photography studios that are located 10 to 50 miles away from Joel's new location.
The competitors:
Silly Moose, Laura Helmke, Artigraphs, Scott Finney, Levon Boss, and Jarrod Castaing
Today, we see a great deal of online snaps shots, almost 80% of people in the globe consider themselves to be photographer based on the fact that they carry a smart phone.
The challenge to find people who appreciate a tru talent has become limited, but had not faded.
Good photographers are rare to find despite the fact the ease to access the digital photography world. There are also several sectors that photographers can focus on mastering which gives a larger chance of exposure for other photographers.
We can never stop learning, as long as the digital world keeps on advancing. In my research I had picked photographers that align with Joel's line of work, and his continuous evolving ideas that he seeks to learn in order to sharpen his skills. Joel's work revolves around portraits, candid photography, landscape, architecture, and sites.
The Competitors analysis outlines the 4 essential points for anyone who needs to get a better overview of how to enter a new market, and hopefully succeed.
Interviews
I conducted my first interview with my Client Joel Williams, I ensured that my interview with my client is thorough and is addressing all necessary points, I listed four main categories in my interview, and included questions under each main category:
* Value Proposition
* Project Vision
* Audience and Customers
* Competitors
The outcome of the interview was immaculate, Joel is very easy to talk to, and he is very clear with his answers, the questions I had asked helped me build my vision about my next steps for the information architecture, and the design model phases.
I interviewed 8 participants from Joel's clients and they all had constructive information to share with them, one thing they all shared was their great experience with Joel as a photographer and a mentor, they all connected with him on the personal level and had maintained a great relationship with him as they find him a very kind, knowledgable, and patient mentor.
Information Architecture
Composition
When a real project is being handled rather than just a case study the information architecture is easily obtained with the assistance of the clients feedback along the users of the business or service.
The formation of the personas is identified by the characters and personalities fo the users, composing a persona from a collectivee data shared among users tend to serve the structure of the website. My interview intake from all Joel's current students and clients helped me with building the personas, their emotional journey the different scenarios a user flow and task will accomplsih.
Personas
Emotional Journey
Site Map
User Flow & Task Flow
Business Model Canvas
Card Sorting
Participants
Wireframes
Brand
Shapes & Colors
Few elements were already laid out for me prior to selecting the appropriate branding line for Joel's website. He personally has a preference for neutral colors, his current website is very basic and simple.
Sticking to the simplicity of Joel's likings, I used black, white, a tint of gold and an accent of red as my main color scheme.
The clear Roboto and the elegant Merriweather are typefaces used a mixture of sans-serif and serif,
The logo sketch was also predefined by Joel William's current signature, for him his signature is his logo, I wanted to volunteer and create a new logo for him as a new entry, and part of my plan to re-brand his website.
The logo design took a minimalistic touch, outlining the abstract geometrical shape of a camera box with an offset layer to give an illusionary of a 3d camera depth.
My primary design for the logo, crazy 8s', and wireframes sketches shows the sharp angled rectangle shape for all the components, but that was one of the main things that my client did not approve, nor preferred, he wanted a sense of softness applying curvature within his logo, and website design, these changes are reflected in the images' frames, and the structure of the new website design.
Logo Design
Images
Experimentation
Click, click, click and click
Just like a photo shoot session where a photographer keeps on clicking an invite number of shoots to finally get a few good shoots, the ideation phase takes several clicks, moves and changes to reach to satisfaction.
Joel's photographers identity has shaped my design approach, I took into consideration his clients age category and requirements.
His current students are more interested in working directly with him rather than connecting with a third party service provider like lessons.com to book photography lessons or photo shoot sessions.
Joel's current website does not provide the service of filling out a detailed form in order to gain more knowledge of what type of service or user is trying to connect and reach out to Joel.
One of the main issues that Joel had mentioned during our business conversation is the age of his targeted audience; his main concern is to deal with people aged between 45+, he did not want to extend his services particularly for any interested students below the age of 38, he feels more comfortable working with older adults. This information was essential for the formation of the design in terms of simplicity and clarity, which soothed the ideation process for the website's design.
Responsive Design
Prototype
The most essential part of the prototype is filling out the form and checking few images that showcases Joel's own photography style. The amount of images that Joel had shared with me through his dropbox amount are tremendous, it was impossible to go through all his photos. He gave me a high level highlight about which albums he would like to focus on and introduce and from there I was able to create multiple pages for the website's prototype.
The usability test was done through Maze "a free third party testing platform". Honestly, doing the test without any visual communication with the usurers was difficult, and time costly.
First, the time spent for learning how to use Maze was not ideal especially that I had no background on how to use it, how to build an efficient test through it and how to get it running. IT took me time to figure it out, I was not sure about the outcome, and I had to wait for 2 days for it to be live as it had a glitch in the system, the customer service for that software is zero, I had sent 2 e-mails to costumer service an until today I never heard from anyone!
Not to mention the frustration that my users were facing, for some countries or areas in the state using the link through a phone does not work, and for people in the USA there was a continuous glitch from Maze's side that they were unable to click and move to the next page of the test so after a couple of trials they quit and stopped.
Nonetheless, I eventually was able to obtain a couple of results that gave me a reassuring feedback on what minor ideations are required for the site.
Usability Test
Maze Test & Synthesis Wall
Conclusion
Working with a real client while trying to learn UX design was actually so much fun for me, I was lucky to find a great client who is direct with his requirements, agile with his responses, and not picky about my choices on the final design touch ups.
The usability test was the only set back I had during this project, I would have gained a better insight from digitally communicating with my users through one of the main communication tools like Zoom or FaceTime to feel the vibe, to break the users fear about an online test, and direct them about the one task experiment.
Joel gave me the green light to work on physically re-designing his current website, and I am looking forward to working with him again after I am done with my UX design course
