Pamicasa App
Client
Pamicasa (Startup)
Date
May 2019
My Role
UX/UI Product Designer
Team
- Carlos J. Milliam – Proyect manager
- Karla Jules – Architect of solutions & Developer
- Manuel Gerald – Developer
- Luis Setien – Developer
- Jessica Goire – Assistant Graphic Artist
- Yaisel Prado Pino – Content Manager
Technologies
The project
Create a scalable delivery solution
This project was developed for the startup Pa’micasa, a young company based in Havana, Cuba; dedicated to the management of home deliveries in the national territory.
The goal that our client set for us was to create a custom app, taking into account the characteristics of its implementation environment and the entire technological ecosystem that would allow Cuban users to make and manage orders within their closest geographical area.
The application was developed in Android Studio, with a fully scalable approach. In addition, a fully integrated web platform was developed with the mobile version, based on a SPA (Single Page Applications) with Angular.js technology, which undoubtedly meant a positive leap in the user experience.
Today Pa’micasa competes for the position of the best technological solution for managing online orders in Cuba. In just a few months since its launch, it has reached more than 5K downloads on Google Play and has won several technology awards at major technology events in the country.
My role
The company requested my services as responsible for the experience strategy and design of the iOS app and web platform. I led the UX/UI work, producing all major deliverables for the first version of the product, presenting them to the client between October 2019.
Designing the
Brand concept
In the first meetings with the client, he made it clear to us that his greatest dream was for “Pa’micasa” to be the reference mobile application to make home orders from the comfort of his home. This was the goal and that is where we should direct all our development focus and effort.
In the first stage of the project we focused on designing the brand for this new product. We knew the target audience to which our app was directed (preferably a millennial and early adopter audience), so the new brand had to represent that freshness and dynamism in design, in addition to having that strength and character that identifies young Cubans.
To synthesize the entire brand ideology in an imagotype, we focus on 3 conceptual elements:
* Signify the “urban” character of the services provided by the company (that is, in principle, it would only work for large cities).
*Highlight the role of the geopositioning service through the map as a fundamental element within the functionality of the application.
*Highlight the strength and colloquial character of the name (Pa’micasa) within the brand.
Based on these design principles, we managed to create a proposal that was aligned with the principles that we had defined in the research stage.
The process
To carry out the design process of the app and the web application, we defined five stages of the process: empathize, define, ideate, design and finally test the product. We also assigned specific tasks to each member of our team during each of the stages of the process.
Emphatize
The research stage prior to the development and sketching of the different UI of the app and the web application served to clearly define our target audience, knowing exactly who I was designing for allowed me to ask myself how the application fits into the lives of users. I envisioned ideal experiences and focused on how our people think and behave rather than go into detail about interfaces, technologies, or business goals.
Keeping the scenarios at a high level allowed us to work fluidly and explore concepts that we could easily communicate with our team and client. These concepts formed the backbone of our requirements and allowed us to express them from both a functional and emotional perspective, allowing for greater empathy with our users.
Define & Ideate
In this stage we redesign the navigation maps of the app and the web application and completely restructure the content architecture of the different products. We use Jesse James Garrett’s Visual Vocabulary to represent the architecture of the application. The early adoption of a numbering system was beneficial in helping our team stay in sync.
After identifying the main “focus points” in our scenarios, I defined the main paths that users would explore when navigating the products, both for the app and the web application. Crafting several key user journeys was the best way to conceptualize and structure the proposed content and functionality. Then, we started to think about and simulate particular contexts of use, the opportunities they present and how the elements that are manifested in the interface would help the user.
UX/UI Design
for Integrated mobile
and web platform
At this stage, our client’s indications regarding the products were very clear: “We want our products to become the digital product of reference for home delivery orders in Cuba” for this reason the solution has to be easy, modern and scalable”.
With this clear idea we set to work, we developed the mobile application from scratch, using Android Studio technologies.
At all stages of development we ensure every detail of usability and user experience on the different platforms (web and mobile), paying close attention to the “unitary” nature of the data in the integration between the different platforms.
This project was quite fast in execution and delivery, we only had about 7 months to design, develop and test the quality of the product, but it gave a nuance of “integrality” to the entire work team.
Main results of the project:
– We create the identity of the brand, developing a modern, youthful proposal, adaptable to digital environments and aligned with the identity principles of the company.
– We design and define the information architecture for the different platforms (mobile and web), proposing a versatile and dynamic navigation approach.
– We managed to develop a SPA web application based on Angular.js technology, which allowed the final experience for the user to be much faster and lighter, especially for mobile environments.
– The changes in the content structure had a positive impact on the SEO of the website, resulting in a direct increase in organic traffic to the page, which had a positive impact on web positioning.
Sketching
the app
We took a top‐down approach to defining the overall structure of the experience. Sketching and storyboarding, I generated stacks of ideas about the arrangement of UI, functional and data elements, and interactive behaviours. Starting broad, our vision began evolving into something tangible. A high‐level design language, interactions and the app’s anatomy began to piece together.
Wireframes
In the initial sketches we made several content distribution tests simply by drawing and laying out the different UIs and their interrelation.
The main advantage that we found in the use of wireframes was to be able to visualize different ways to structure the visuality of the app in a quick and simple way, to start working on the final file from a solid and functional base.
The result
a scalable integrated experience
The impact
In a few months we designed the EasyPermit product on iOS, Android and desktop. We stick to our principles and focus on our strategy of making the experience easier (clear + fast + accessible).
During this time, we also focused on aligning the design principles of the company with the digital products we were creating, the idea was to make it feel more modern and reliable with a new brand identity system that differentiates it in the market.
