Defining the Challenges

Before starting any design phases, the challenges and goals of the website redesign needed to be defined. A call with Nita allowed me to kickstart this process by better understanding why she was interested in a website redesign. I asked her to lay out some of the values she places on a photography website and to follow up with if she felt like her current website did or did not meet those those values. Here are the values Nita laid out that were not being met:

• Her website did not showcase her versatility. Nita had expressed that she did several genres of photography, and she felt that it was difficult for her current website to give users an accurate grip on how wide her skillset ranged.
• Nita wanted people to know she used an iPhone. With the iPhone camera being a factor that sets her apart from other photographers, it was important to her that users were able to see this clearly.
• The website did not drive visitors to her education courses. With her new courses on iPhone photography, Nita wanted to find a way to use her website as a promotional tool for the courses.

Research Overview

Once the challenges were defined, I wanted to do some research to create some design concepts as well as test later designs:

• Competitive analysis of other successful photographer/videographer sites
• One round of user interviews, pre-design (four users)
• One round of moderated usability testing on the prototype website (four users)

User Interviews

The first round of user interviews focused on six questions answered by four users to help get a sense of what they found important in a photographer and their website.

1. How often do you take pictures/have your picture taken?
2. What is your relation to professional photography? (Model, photographer, editor, etc.)
3. What are some things you value in a photographer?
4. What are some things that give you confidence in a photographer you’re hiring?
5. How do you measure if a photographer is good at their craft?
6. What are some issues you have with finding the right photographer?

Interview Findings

• Users didn’t measure photographers strictly by one metric. Things such as quality of work, pricing, and uniqueness were all factors.
• Users do not enjoy having to seek out all of the information and work
  of a photographer. They want to be sold on the photographer by the photographer, not have to convince themselves.

Iteration

After the high fidelity designs were created, a working prototype was assembled for testing.

Usability Testing

Usability testing was done on four participants to determine the viability of the website prototype. This consisted of giving the participants a handful of pre and post-test questions. The main part of the test had them attempt to gather information based on four scenarios.

Usability Fixes

The fact that Nita only uses an iPhone was made obvious enough that it was pointed out very quickly by all users. However, it was noted by more than one user that while her work was very good, they still wanted to know just a little bit more about what this might look like in practice. I had prompted Nita to send me a video showing her credentials on the news as well as her explaining and demonstrating some of her work practices to help that credibility hit home even harder.

Conclusion

The website has successfully been delivered, and I was able to put it together in Wix. While there is no hard data on the website’s performance as of now, I have received positive feedback and satisfaction from Nita on the design and functionality. All of the albums have been uploaded, and she has been getting great compliments on the redesign from new and returning clients.

Challenges and Compromises

Fortunately, the design needs between Nita and the tested users had quite a bit of overlap. Not many compromises were made, but some notable changes did make their way into the final site, including:

Users had expressed wanting more contact info. This idea was brought up, but Nita had expressed that too direct forms of contact had bogged down her calendar and productivity in the past. Due to this, we ultimately decided to stick to just email, a method of communication that she functioned the best in.

Not a compromise, but there was a bit of a challenge in finding the correct genre cards for the Photo page. We struggled to determine the correct and most impactful albums to link to before finally settling on an all-encompassing card called “And More.”

What I Would Do Differently

I felt that this project was successful. Luckily, there aren’t too many things I would change about my approach, but that doesn’t mean everything went perfectly. The biggest thing that I would have done differently is that I would have planned around the limitations of Wix right from the beginning. I knew Wix had limitations, but I really should have taken better inventory of those limitations in order to help my hi-fi designs transfer into practice much easier.

My other wish is a minor nitpick, but I still believe could have helped. During the initial user interviews before the design phase, I wish that I had asked for some harder examples of what people valued in a photography website. I asked them for concepts, traits, philosophies, and more. However, I wish that I had simply asked, “Do you have any examples from photographers that you like?” I believe this would have made the design phase go by much faster.