PC FORGE
Timeframe: June 2022 - September 2022
Platform: Mobile - Prototype Link
Role: Sole Product Designer
Impact: 6/7 participants said they would the app to build a PC. 5/7 found the experience to be intuitive.
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The process hasn’t changed in over a decade, but people still ask about the same fears of building a pc.
Problem
PC building has been a mainstay for years in the tech scene for enthusiasts of all levels. PCs allow a tremendous amount of freedom to the user in how much time, money and effort they want to allocate in order to achieve a system that meets their usage needs. Despite the building process being mostly unchanged over the past two decades and ever increasing popularity in PC building, there is still not a good aggregated resource that walks people through the physical building process in accordance to their parts and all of the handling nuances it may entail. This leaves PC builders to scour through millions of search results to find their answers.
Solution
A personalized guide experience by allowing users to import their parts and receive detailed installation and handling instructions along with imagery that dynamically adjusts based on their parts. As well as being able to build with other PC builders of all levels by seeing useful comments and discussions that can help users in their building journeys.
My Role
I conducted both the research and design process from start to finish over a duration of around 3 months. I was responsible for finding and conducting research with participants, as well as concepting and executing design ideas.
Who's Out There?
Surely a multibillion dollar industry that has seen continuous growth over the decades would have an app or service for this? From my research, not quite. PC Part Picker is a staple for creating new builds, as it ensures compatibility between parts and ease of use in exploring build ideas. It has spawned multiple copycats such as Newegg’s (a top computer parts site) own PC Builder portal within their app, but these services all end after the checkout process of buying parts. Nothing I found from large PC part companies tried to own the physical build process, only lightly having content for certain parts or Intel themselves saying on their own website “building a PC is not as hard as it initially seems” but not having any actual guide content.
The Search For Insight
I conducted user interviews with participants who were familiar with tech and had various understandings of PCs and their components to identify what their feelings were towards building a PC, how they sought out information for learning things in general, as well as if there was anything specific that helped them get over the hurdle from seeing how to do something, to actually trying it.
Affinity diagram showing how users are searching and learning about information and what factors affect the credibility of that info.
"I don't want to fuck it up"
- Austin V.
This one quote in particular, while candid and concise, best encapsulated the fears and hesitancy of first time builders. My research showed greater depth into this mindset. Users are comfortable with various methods of researching and learning how to do things in digital spaces such as within apps or online platforms, but when it comes to learning stuff that takes place physically there is an inherent increase in risk with the physical space. Things can actually break and can’t be fixed with the tap of a button, add that to physical parts that can very much be expensive and you’ve got a situation that's more complex and high stress vs. other “How To ___” YouTube queries.
I now had a different angle to the main problem: Users are lacking confidence when getting into the build process. I had to ensure the product I make would be able to do more than simply give knowledge to users, it had to empower them enough to take the plunge in physically handling the parts. Data from other questions during the initial interviews allowed me to find patterns in how people gain confidence when learning, thus leading to better ideation on how to achieve this in the app’s design.
To better focus design efforts, I need to define the target user for who I was trying to design for.
This led me to my primary persona, Henry Smith.
User Flows
To ensure a better guide experience, I created user flows for two different but similar situations a user could be in when interacting with the app. The core of the initial idea is a start to finish guide for an entirely new build, but I also hypothesized there would be a lot of value in having a flow specifically for replacing or upgrading a single part, as this could be a situation that is a user's first hands-on experience with PCs.
Also, this would allow builders of different skill levels to quickly access information should they want it.
User flows for a complete build guide and a specific part guide.
Sketches
Initial designs I explored how I could make the build process feel dynamic to each person's parts and how a similar layout could be used for every section within the guide. While the variables that changed could be minute (i.e. having to plug in 2 power cables instead of 1), my hypothesis was that these details would create an experience that felt more connected to the user. Additionally I wanted the flow to reflect a sense of progress and accomplishment to users as they went through the steps. Should the user want more nuanced tips or additional confirmation that they’re on the right path, there would be built in tips for the guides and comment sections for discussion, all available from the guide screen without cluttering the core info.
Sketches for adding and selecting parts for guides, as well as initial sketches for the main guide screen.
These sketches were then made into a paper prototype by using POP by Marvel, to create a bit of interaction to prevent test participants getting confused by using just paper. Tests with the sketches reinforced the overall design of the red route flows for the app, while showing me the weaknesses of my layout on various screens, that I would need to reconsider as I went into wireframing.
Wireframes for the complete build guide flow.
Style Guide
When it came to defining the style for what would become PC Forge, I knew I wanted to take inspiration from popular platforms and applications my users used, such as Twitch, Steam, Discord. These are dark mode native apps, that utilize sans serif type and bold colors to highlight important elements, along with some playful/creative iconography. These apps have a distinct style that very much could be categorized as “for Gamers” and think it’s good for PC Forge to feel like it’s related to that ecosystem. In the prototype testing that followed, users were overall positive towards the aesthetic of PC Forge.
Style guide used for initial Hi-Fi prototype rounds.
Hi-Fi Prototypes
Making the first iteration of Hi-Fi screens allowed me to test and evolve my style guide, such as needing to add in variations of primary colors or rethinking how an error state would look once I saw it within a fully designed screen. Overall I felt that my wireframes had laid out a solid groundwork for the Hi-Fi screens, allowing me to focus on the smaller details such as making certain elements full width or deciding how to color certain elements to achieve a visual hierarchy for each page.
Hi-Fi screens
All prototyping that would be used for the usability tests, was done in Figma and while it may not have the most robust suite of prototyping tools, having no friction between prototyping and designing modes made iterating quickly a breeze.
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Link to the Prototype: Here
Usability Testing
My ideal participant was someone who is familiar with other PC native applications and communities, so for all of my usability testing I was able to find participants and conduct tests with them all within Discord a social platform, some were even mostly anonymous in identity to me.
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Testing proved to be positive towards the potential of PC Forge, with participants being delighted by the overall flow and concept of the app. The guide pages specifically were well received in terms of the dynamic imagery with instructions and the comments section. There were certain parts of the user flow and additional prototype functions that were added between rounds to reduce some confusion during later testing.
Outcomes
Overall the project as is, proved there is a framework of something truly could be useful to users who are getting their first PC building experience, as well as being a general useful tool and community of all expertise levels. As research and refinements were made, it became clearer that there was something here that could be a core pillar in further widening access to PCs and their core designs and ideologies of being able to be customized and upgradeable to users by users worldwide.
What I'd Do Differently
If I was able to do the project again, I would hope to be be able to better conduct some of the earlier interviews to have a more focused direction in where I was trying to get with my initial research, as it was my first time doing a UX project from start to finish. It would also be interesting to add in custom video content that I imagined the final product would have, as well as exploring how to prototype a hands-free feature.
Additionally, I would've spent more time concepting different iterations of the user flow between the home screen and getting to the guide as those section of screens made some users feel lost for brief moments.
Key Takeaways
This was my first time trying to do a project that tried to cover the entire spectrum of the UX workflow, so there were a lot of first time experiences with interviews, testing etc. Naturally, I learned a lot of from the experience and feel that I would have a lot of improvement if I was to do it all again, purely from having a better understanding of what that entire process entails. I experienced some feelings of having a lack of direction in the earlier stages, even when I knew the problem area I wanted to explore and think I will have a clearer focus going into the discovery process in future work.