Time
Sep. 2023-Feb. 2024
Duration
5 months
Project brief
Dessau's HSA established Bauhaus Innovation Lab to study and promote team-based design-driven innovation activities between college students, teachers, society and enterprises. We reshaped BIL according to BIL's Vision and innovative spirit. Through understanding and investigation of BIL, we finally completed the design of BIL's website.
Role
UX/UI Designer, Usability Research
user research,wireframes, prototypes
Team
Yixiao He, Yinpeng Gao, Wanming Zhong
About Bauhaus Innovation Lab
Bauhaus Innovation Lab in Dessau's HSA is an place and institution which aims at researching and promoting team-based design driven innovation activities among HSA students, faculty, society and industry.
BIL’s vision: to develop and foster new design driven innovations, design methodologies and collaborations with entrepreneurs and the indust on projects that require an strategic approach.
Bauhaus innovation spirit: aim for radical innovation, aim for team work and co-creation, bring back art thinking into innovation, aim to improve the world, celebrate life...
Main challenges
Vision is hard to define
When we first started working on this project, it was difficult to determine a specific vision based on BIL's Vision. Faced with this problem, we decided to conduct a survey of design-related and non-design-related people. Based on the results of the survey, we extracted some keywords and combined them with our ideas to further determine the vision of the website.
Building a new IA
Building a new information architecture for a new website is difficult. We need to consider many things. So we referred to the labs of multiple universities, analyzed and summarized them, and provided us with some inspirations to learn from. At the same time, combined with the interview content, we helped us clarify the general content of the website.
Unclear visual style
The visual style of the website is also very important. We don’t want to convey a very professional feeling, which will make users afraid to approach and explore. So we chose the classic Bauhaus color scheme of red, yellow, and blue. The overall style of the webpage is more game-like and youthful, which will stimulate users’ desire to explore.
Understand the problem
User research
We interviewed 6 users. The users were between 20 and 45 years old, 50% of them were designers, 50% were non-design related people, and half were male and half were female. We also made the questions playful to prevent the interviews from being too serious and boring, for example: If you were an omnipotent God, what would you want to create to change the world?
Job stories
When I was designing and publicising in backward areas, I found it difficult to popularise my designs in the backward areas.
I wanted to create something low-calorie and tasty, but didn't have the technical background or know how the idea would work.
I wish there could be fewer wars and criminal activities in the world, but my voice is too weak as an ordinary person.
I want to create a fair educational system and educational ideas. I want to create a society that is as fair and just as possible. But there is not enough money to promote the programme.
I want to create unlimited resources like food and energy. The second is to create a rule that is very universal. But that's a very difficult thing to do because human nature is changeable.
I would like to create a portable real-time monitoring machine for physical health, to reduce the incidence of disease and people can all die naturally. But I don't know the professional knowledge and related technology.
Pain point 1
People don’t have the relevant knowledge and technical background to solve problems.
Pain point 3
People don't have a platform or an institution or a government to help them.
Pain point 2
People don't have enough resources and money to solve the problem.
Map user journey and opportunities
Define
We want to try to create a laboratory to disseminate design resources and disseminate of design thinking. It aims to bring design into corners that are usually out of reach. Let design thinking take root and sprout here. We try to pursue new boundaries in design.
Information architecture
User flow
Wireframe and prototype
Wireframes
Prototypes
Testing
During the user testing phase, a total of 6 people participated in the test. Most people think the visual design is okay and they can easily find the information they want. Most people prefer to explore our website. And most people like the color scheme of our website, it looks very interesting.
But when understanding the vision of the website, half of the people think that our homepage has too many text descriptions and they don’t want to read it.
Finalize