My Chart
Is an astrology app for users of all experience level to learn about their horoscopes and to match with other compatible users.
Role
UX/UI Designer
Time
1 Month
Team of One
Alex Wang
Process
Design Thinking
Overview
Astrology has seen a resurgence in popularity with revenue for related apps grew to nearly $40 million in 2019. Per IBISWorld, 'mystical services' grew by 1.4% from 2016 to 2019 and the industry as a whole is worth $2.2 billion. My Chart is a personalized astrological interpretation app with auspicious date selection and horoscope matching.
Heuristic Analysis of Competitors
The function of "good day selection" allows you to choose when is a good day to conduct desired activities.
Under three criteria, I have given the pros and cons of three competitors
App
Human Vernacular
Platform Conventions
Aesthetic & Minimalism
The Pattern
Pro: Well known for its accessibilities, no jargons
Con: Experienced users do not know where the interpretation comes from
Pro: Having dating feature, one of the first in the space
Pro: Color scheme is alluring
Con: No natal chart and has a lot of hidden fees
Con: Lacking uniform color scheme across different App functions
Co-Star
Pro: Ideas are communicated colloquially, easy to understand
Con: Terminologies are sprinkled all over the app, hard to relate
Pro: Very clear navigation for horoscope matching function
Pro: Minimalistic buttons and images are carefully thought over.
Con: Overgeneralized interpretation to fit every situation
Con: None
iPhemeris
Pro: Technical details are good for experienced users in the field
Con: No words explaining anything, only for professional uses
Pro: Well-designed interface for experienced users
Pro: Customizable color schemes for natal chart displays
Con: New users wouldn't understand anything
Con: The UI isn't particularly memorable
User Research
Five users with prior exposure to astrology have been selected from a pool of 20 people. The interviews were centered around the following questions:
1. Are users curious about the subject, but not have the means of understanding?
2. Where do astrology users obtain information?
3. What topics are astrology users mainly interested in?
Affinity Diagram
User feedbacks are sorted into three groups to create an affinity diagram with prior interests, accessibility, and areas of focus. Accessibility is the main concern as users have trouble finding appropriate astrology information to their level of understanding.
Key Insights
1. Astrology information users receive today is not properly curated and can be either too advanced or too basic.
2. There is a potential to incorporate relationship matching functionality as users often seek guidance in their relationship.
3. Users want to convert astrological information they received into some actionable insights.
Building Persona
I concluded that the key in building an appealing astrology App is about constructing actionable functions while speaking to not only the astrology expert but also the everyday Joe. I crafted three persona to capture user needs and pain points.
Takeaway
Users are separated into two groups: those who want to learn astrology systematically and those who simply want interpretation without any technicalities. They both are interested in similar features such as time selection or relationship matching so these functionalities became crucial when designing the app.
Ideation
Some brainstorming led me to decide implementing two separate displays, one for novice and one for expert. I also took notes from popular dating app tinder for its swiping functionality. Selected sketches are as follow:
1. Personalized interpretation for novice with no jargons, everything in simple English.
3. Suitable future events to search from.
5. Horoscope matching works similarly to tinder with sliding filters to match users based on their horoscopes.
2. Interpretation expert view with graphs and charts, showing users where each interpretation comes from.
4. Calendar view with auspicious dates to conduct selected events.
6. The main screen for horoscope matching.
User Flows
I then settled on the horoscope matching flow with a focus on astro sliding bars, filtering others' horoscope based on the natal chart.
Wireframe and Usability Testing
With mobile first, low-fi wireframes have been designed focusing on personalized astrological interpretations, horoscope matchings, and auspicious dates selections. The same six screens from above have been wireframed:
2
1
4
3
5
6
Moderated Usability Testing
In the first round of moderated test, I selected five potential users age between age 25 - 50. Among them, one is an expert on the subject matter, two are intermediate, and two are beginners who know little. They were asked to complete the following tasks, and results are listed below.
Task
Novice 1
Novice 2
Intermediate 1
Intermediate 2
Expert
Sign up
Navigating in novice view
Navigating in expert view
Matching with
another user
Select good dates for traveling
Success
Inconclusive
Fail
Not Applicable
Insights
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The screen 1 novice view is filled with jargons according to both beginners, and one user prefers traditional astrology layout in magazine where user can choose a specific area such as career or personality to go deeper into.
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Interviewees have difficulties understanding screen 5.
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Users have issues in knowing what can be searched in screen 3 because the it is an experimental feature.
Moodboard and Prototype
I wanted the app to look sleek, exact, and mysterious. Moodboard is as followed:
High-Fi Mockup
1
2
3
5
4
6
In Screen 1, I simplified the wireframe, and advanced symbols have been removed; area of focus is added on the top to help novice users to get familiarized.
In Screen 3, easy words were used and Screen 4 is added when users hover over question marks in screen 3. Screen 4 explains what does a particular sliding bar do.
Search bar in Screen 5 is replaced by tags to reduce confusions.
Clickable Prototype
Retrospective
I have worked on another round of usability testing on the iterated prototype, yielding better results: 50% increase from fail to inconclusive and 20% from inconclusive to success.