Mirweis SANGIN

user experience designerInteraction designer

usability expert

Portfolio

© Mirweis SANGIN - please do not distribute

mirweis@gmail.com

PROCESS AND RESPONSABILITIES

• Competitive analysis: In a first step, I conducted a competitive analysis by focusing on strength and weaknesses of existing products in order to make a difference.

• Formative user studies: I conducted interviews with 9 World of Warcraft players covering a variety of gaming experience (ranging from casual gamers to hardcore gamers) to investigate their practices and experience with existing information databases. The results showed that these online tools are mainly used to anticipate and prepare in-game experience. Furthermore, analyses of the interaction routines showed that the competitor products are often not focused on gamers’ real needs (e.g. comparing object efficiency, character based browsing etc.). The information structure is rather close to that of the game and does not fit gamers’ mental model.

• User experience design: informed by the user studies, I derived user experience practices and scenarios to guide the UI design process. I aimed at making a difference by focusing on users real needs and designing a filtering system tailored to the users’ actual mental model of the information structure.

• UI design: I integrated business, technical and UCD requirements to come up with design solutions (wireframes). And finally, I designed a first prototype of the GUI by taking into account contextual elements such as users’ mental models, task-flows, cultural identity etc.

Design innovation: user-centered predefined filters helping users filter according to their needs and the characteristics of avatars (tanks, healers, damage-dealer, etc.)

navagation:a 3- levels tab-based navigation structure reproducing WoW’s information structure.

three-step filtering: A three step filtering process helps users deepen their search by selecting among predefined easy-access criteria or by defining their own criteria

filter and browse: the item-search interface philosophy is based on filtering and browsing simplifying to the maximum the users actions while favoring exploration.

search results: search results are listed dynamically according to user’s filtering actions with most relevant items on top of the list

wireframes UI prototypessketches

DESCRIPTION AND CONTEXT

In the context of Stryke.In - a start-up company based in Geneva (Switzerland) started in 2007 with the objective of providing web-based applications and services for Massively-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), I was recruited to help designing tools for gamers such as game information databases, online community management and communication tools (e.g. guild-management, raid-management etc). The first objective of Stryke.In was to design and develop a user-friendly and highly intuitive web-based information database for World of Warcraft (one of the most successful MMORPG with more than 10 million active players). My mission was to find innovative GUI design solutions allowing gamers to browse and search among various game information such as object characteristics, quests, non-playing characters etc.

ROLES: UX strategist; usability expert; interaction designer; GUI designer

TIMELINE: June 2007 – June 2008

Stryke.In: information database interface for gamers

Planzone: collaborative Project management tool

DESCRIPTION AND CONTEXT

Augeo Software is one of the leading European software vendors delivering project and portfolio management and project-based services. Their last product, Planzone.com is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for cross-boundary business teams, mixing structured project-management and collaborative workspace technologies. Augeo solicited my expertise in user experience design of collaborative workspace technologies to help them deliver a unique online collaborative solution with a highly user-centered focus. They needed someone who could easily adapt user experience solutions to their agile development framework and help them along the path of making Planzone a cutting-edge solution in collaborative project-management and communication solutions for a large palette of businesses.

ROLES: User-experience and interaction design consultant (agile UX)

TIMELINE: September 2008 – March 2009

wireframes IxD prototypes

PROCESS AND RESPONSABILITIES

• Heuristic evaluation: I used heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough methods to evaluate the Planzone.com user-interface with a particular focus on workflow support analysis and user interactions. The analyses allowed to point out some critical problems on various level such as the information architecture, labeling, navigation, and user workflows.

• Collaborative design workshops: I conducted a series of focus groups and collaborative design workshops with the main stakeholders to come up with optimal design solution to cope with the issues highlighted in the aforementioned evaluation.

• User experience prototyping: based on the decision taken during the workshops, I prepared scenarios, storyboards and wireframes to present design solution making the users interaction with planzone as easy and efficient as possible.

• UX Strategy counseling: I provided strategic support to reframe the product’s philosophy by following actual web 2.0 models (i.e. enterprise 2.0) , pushing towards more horizontal collaboration and communication approach of project management, with a specific focus on team- project-managers as well as team-members.

• Interaction design: following the “where you see is where you act” mantra, I helped designing new functionalities such as time-sheet management, time-tracking and document versioning through rich interaction patterns and principles, making users experience as situated and seamless as possible.

process ideation

Planzone: complete GUI redesign

DESCRIPTION AND CONTEXT

Following my advice, planzone.com team decided to redesign the entire graphical interface to provide a more up-to-date look-and-feel to the product and recruited me to help them define the requirements and supervise the design process. In collaboration with a GUI designer, we work iteratively on the graphical redesign to make planzone an efficient and visually appealing application.

ROLES: User-experience and interaction design consultant (UX-agile)

TIMELINE: march 2009 – present

PROCESS AND RESPONSABILITIES (graphic design: Vincent Lemoign)

• UX Strategy counseling: I provided strategic support to reorient the product’s interaction paradigm, using socio-cognitive models of collaboration and management. One of the innovative design idea we came up with is to combine project-management and GTD-inspired productivity tools to make Planzone an enjoyable support tool for everyday’s personal and teamwork.

• User experience prototyping: I prepared scenarios, storyboards and wireframes to present design solution to improve information structure, navigation and rich interaction within the product, using an agile UX method developed to efficiently fit in the product development context.

• GUI design supervision: I helped improving the visual design and branding using my extended knowledge of perception psychology and human cognition. I particularly focused on the scan-ability of the information, striving to keep the interface as clean and easily scan-able as possible.

general structure: personal and project spaces are separated

project summary: carefully designed information hierarchy with respect to the current project

entreprise 2.0: A more social and collaborative feel with the teams activity feed (social awareness tool)

scan-ability: careful information presentation to facilitate scan-ability and attract attention when needed

storyboards & wireframesuser scenarios

Gurufi.com: connecting tutors and parents

DESCRIPTION AND CONTEXT

The vision of Gurufi.com is to help parents from all around the US connect with tutors from the 20 top universities in the US. GuruFi.com aims to help parents find, hire and evaluate effective tutors, essay editors and admission consultants. On the tutors’ side, Gurufi.com aims to help tutors, editors and consultants find new clients and opportunities to teach, edit essays and provide guidance via remote video/audio conferencing, build their own brand and reputation and earn money.

ROLES: User-experience and interaction designer; strategy board member

TIMELINE: march 2009 – present (work in progress)

PROCESS AND RESPONSABILITIES

• UX Strategy definition: I defined a user-centered design strategy plan by integrating business and user requirements, user profiles, informational and interactional needs, user-study planning etc.

• Heuristic expert evaluation: I used heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough methods to evaluate the alpha version of Gurufi.com user-interface. A series of usability issues where reported for consideration of further improvement.

• UX and IxD design (work in progress): I am now focusing on providing optimal solution to cope with the usability issues highlighted in the Heuristic evaluation.

Alpha Version: under revision