Conmunity is a subscription based platform that allows construction companies specializing in window installation to work on the same project site while sharing task progress. My role consisted of user experience and interface designer, focusing on the functionality behind the application as well as the final design. Please click the logo above to experience Conmunity.
Problem & Solution
Our goal was to create a minimum viable product, specifically a SaaS product within 3 months that would be ready to use in a specific industry. After researching 3 small business owners, we found a sizeable opportunity in the market for construction companies. Specifically, companies needing to track daily tasks and project completions. This application, unlike other project management software, is designed for easy use and navigation. The user is able to start projects and build tasks effectively and efficiently. Through its inception, Conmunity was tested by a window installation company. This application encourages users to subscribe through key locked features that bring more value to the user and their projects.
Working with a business owner gave us great insight and depth into the beginning processes of building this application. Ivan, who operates his own window installation company, was keen to share what a company like his would need in a software.
UX/UI Design
Low Fidelity & High Fidelity Prototypes
Our approach to the design and prototyping process was to use an Agile design process. This means placing focus on users, their interactions and having working software as opposed to a design based on a plan and comprehensive documentation. Continuously incorporating changes to the design so that the user and the software remains the main focus. During the build of the low fidelity prototype, we built out each main feature and tested vigorously with Ivan. Our designs were not to be finalized based on any assumption. Any detail or feedback received from Ivan was inputted into the new designs. This way of usability testing ensured we were consistently validating our changes.
With Ivan as our user for testing, we were fortunate enough to gather and implement his feedback, which helped us develop better usability design. The most challenging aspect of the development process for the design was figuring out how to implement SaaS strategies. After a month of testing and making adjustments to our high fidelity prototype, we were able to finalize our interface. Please click the text below for the link to the full usability report: Conmunity Usability Report
Usability
We drew inspiration for our interface design from an application called Storj. After determining our colour theory and other key visual design elements, we compared and contrasted different app interfaces. Ultimately, we opted for rounded corners to promote a softer effect that is easier on the eyes of users.
Typography
Source Sans Pro is Adobe’s first open source typeface family. It’s inception being primarily for user interfaces helped us greatly in our decision. Our ultimate goal for the interface design was to be clean, minimal, and easy to use. We adopted this font to be what we needed as clarity of legibility to the users.
We decided on using blue as our primary colour for a clean and simplistic interface design. Blue is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith and truth. We opted for a more monochromatic design by using just one shade. Additionally, red, green, and yellow were chosen as our secondary colours for buttons and tags due to their obvious connection to simple everyday interactions via traffic rules. Red is the most common identifier of a warning or error message, while green remains to be the populaur indication of a “go” or success message. Lastly, yellow is indicative of a pause or slow-down alert and was therefore used as our “pending approval” notification.
Colour Theory
Logo Concept, Design & Brand
The name for this application was invented quite early on and is a combination of the words “construction” and “community”. We picked these words as the foundation of our application because the app is rooted in the construction and developer industry as well as Ivan consistently referring to his team being a community of hard workers. “Conmunity” came about as a slip of the tongue in an early brainstorming session and stuck for us immediatly. We chose Conmunity as it was a unique blend of the words. As for the design of the logo, we adopted the idea of a clipboard due to it’s symbol as a checklist or method of keeping information organized and handy. The lines came about as lines of text for individual tasks, but then became better suited as window blind lines. After experimenting the logos among our peers and Ivan and his team, we finalized our design.
The goal of this project was to research, design and build a minimum viable product within a 3 month span that also fit the description as a SaaS product. Given the countless usability testing sessions with Ivan, we were able to produce and present our construction application. Click the Conmunity logo on the right to experience our final prototype built on Figma.
Final Product