Over time, and especially as a result of the recent global health pandemic, more and more people are looking to build a strong support system while exploring ways to reflect, gain perspective on the future and improve their mental health. People may do this by seeking out traditional methods of therapy, but some do this by consulting psychic and spiritual advice as well.
My Psychic Network (MPN) is a new business looking to establish itself as a unique brand among the competition while providing a safe and trusting place for people to easily find and connect with a virtual community of psychic and spiritual advisors.
As a user of psychic and/or spiritual services, it can often be challenging to identify not only an advisor who best fits specific interests and needs, but it can be often difficult to find and choose the most trusted company or service overall.
How might we help MPN provide a safe and trusting place online for people to easily find and connect with psychic and spiritual advisors?
In addition, how might we build a unique brand and digital presence for MPN so that they can establish themselves as a new business among the competition?
During my initial secondary research, I will begin to explore the problem space, identify important questions and begin to uncover trends and behaviors that may exist in the current marketplace. I will learn about the competition in terms of websites offering connections to psychics and spiritual advisors online. During this phase, I will identify important questions, as well as explore and analyze user behavior patterns, preferences, and pain points that may already exist within the landscape. This knowledge will help me develop the insight necessary to build a solid foundation for the best solution and user experience I can design.
The following are some key statistics and trends revealed from my research of the current psychic and healing industry.
Sources:
A thorough competitive analysis will allow me to gain an understanding of how and where current psychic websites succeed or fail and what makes a psychic website unique.
User Research
Next, I conducted user interviews to begin to understand what our users may need, prefer, or consider as a pain point when it comes to using psychic and spiritual services. In addition, I will try to understand their thoughts & feelings around experiences with psychic and spiritual advisors as well. We will also seek to interview a psychic or spiritual advisor to try to understand their needs and pain points around providing services online and in general.
Research Participants
In seeking out research participants, I targeted gaining insight from those who had used the services of a psychic either/and/or a spiritual advisor previously. This included also seeking out a user who may be a skeptic and someone who may have unique pain points when it comes to seeking out a psychic. My overall goal was to broaden the scope of my research participant pool and ensure that in designing the best user experience, I can reach an inclusive audience and perhaps even help rid the stigma that may come with the concept of psychic phenomena. In addition, I aimed to interview at least 1 user who currently offers psychic and/or spiritual services.
Research Questions
Grouping user similarities utilizing an affinity map will allow me to synthesize the qualitative research findings and with that, better pinpoint and understand specific user needs. Some common themes I discovered through this exercise:
After analyzing the qualitative research and assessing the findings from both user interviews and user surveys, I gathered the following key insights:
Needs & Preferences
Pain points
Needs & Preferences
Pain points
After gathering insights from the in-person interviews and user surveys, I formulated “how might we?” questions to better understand the user's needs and problems, and then created possible solutions.
Once I’ve completed the user research phase, collected and organized the data, I will build user personas to further embody My Psychic Network’s target users. For this process, I created 3 personas: The Avid Psychic Consumer. This user seeks out psychic services frequently. Then we have the Skeptic Psychic Consumer. While the skeptic has received a psychic reading before, they are not 100% a believer. Finally, to better understand our Psychic Advisor target audience, I will create a persona based on the user research as it pertains to the Psychic Advisor.
I created a user journey map specifically for Zoe, our avid psychic services consumer. My hope is by focusing in on Zoe's journey, I will also be able to capture some of the frustrations that our skeptic user may experience as well. My goal is to now begin to visualize the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings the user will have throughout their journey using My Psychic Network's website.
Next, a sitemap will help communicate which key pages the website will have and how they are linked together including what content will be included in terms of sections on each page. This will allow us to better understand the overall flow of information and content for the site.
I then created 3 specific task flows to illustrate the steps all users would follow to complete specific actions, such as creating an account, searching for a psychic advisor, and going through a booking a reading & checkout process.
With the above task flows and research insights in mind, I began sketching on paper to create possible solutions in terms of what the best website experience would be for our My Psychic Network users. While sketching, I will largely focus on the layout including navigation, information architecture, and the overall visual hierarchy. For the purposes of this MVP, however, my focus for the rest of the design thinking process will be on the primary users (The Avid User and the Skeptic User). During this process, I will reflect on the following questions to ensure I remain user-centric throughout the process.
While completing the mid-fidelity wireframes, I began to create ideas for logo concepts including the overall UI for the website. Once a logo was finalized, I created a Brand Style Guide to also include typography, color palette, buttons, icons, imagery, etc. During this process, I was in close communication and collaboration with the owners of My Psychic Network (MPN). The MPN business and marketing stakeholders had a strong vision for what they wanted to achieve with their brand and I wanted to be sure to capture the essence of their vision and help bring the brand to life. I drew a lot of inspiration from a mood board that my MPN stakeholders had provided.
MPN Mood Board
Next, it was time to apply UI and begin to create the first round of high-fidelity wireframes. Click below to view each page and its respective desktop and mobile screens.
I created a high-fidelity mobile app prototype to bring the design and user journey to life. I will use the high fidelity prototype to conduct usability testing and begin to move into the iteration phase in order to improve the overall Career Bright user experience.
Taking into account usability test findings as well as the business needs and constraints around timing, I wanted to prioritize a few small changes as a first round of iteration for the MVP website. In the first iteration, I put focus on improving the user experience and ease of booking a psychic reading. Knowing this is a user pain point discovered in research, I wanted to be sure the process was clear and the experience was smooth and easy.
Modifying the checkout process according to user feedback to include improved navigation, payment details, and clear pricing language.
Launch MVP
After a first round of iteration and presenting the initial high-fidelity designs to MVP stakeholders, the next step will be to work in collaboration with MPN's development team to ensure a successful website launch.
Psychic Advisor - User research
Continue user research regarding psychic advisors who provide services via MPN's website to ensure the best user experience for our psychic advisors in terms of the MPN psychic application process as well as presentation of services and identifying users to build their client database.
Usability Testing -Mobile screens
Continued usability testing will be necessary to ensure that the website exceeds expectations in terms of ease of use. To ensure consistency in design when it comes to responsiveness, we will further test the mobile version of the website.
