Protalk
ProTalk is a platform for intensive in-person conversations with experienced mentors. Users can always find a more capable person, an absolute master, to share his experience with you and solve your problems.
Scope:
Problem framing
Concept development
Validation
User testing
Client:
Protalk
Duration:
3 months
My Role:
User Research
UI/UX Design
Design Strategy
Branding Design
What's the Context
Protalk is an early-stage start-up based in China. The founder aims to create a high quality content online platform that encourages people to share their knowledge, as well as could develop the public culture and the education sector. The team was small, and we worked in an agile manner by continually updating our concepts from user feedback.
The Challage
The challenge was to create a new knowledge marketplace service that help people to get professional advice from world class experts.
Aims
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Encourage respondents to share the skills and build a harmonious online community in order to promote users’ demand of lifelong learning.
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Users can choose to pay for the answers to study more any time and everywhere.
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Assessing customer needs and provide unique and specific solutions that meet their needs
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Ensure customers are satisfied with the product or service.
Outcome
After 2 months of launch, the total transaction amount over RMB 18 million, the repurchase rate reached 33%, and the number of daily payments exceeded 190,000.
There have been more than 10,000 specialists from well-known Internet companies, fortune 500 professionals and more than 50 types of experts registered on Protalk. Through Protalk, countless users have already met mentors, close friends and even career partners.
Design Approach
Why is this a Problem
The skills gap plague the global workforce
Facing gaps in the professional capacity and skills in workplaces, young adults feel a strong need to expand their sphere of knowledge. Talk with the experts in your industry, knowing what hiring managers are looking for gives them an edge over the competition and increases their chances of getting hired or promoted.
People do not know how to find a mentor who can answer their specific question
Finding a mentor with who can solve your problem, help you reach your professional goals, and also fit your time schedule remains a challenge and people struggle with it.
Lack of motivation and interest in learning
People might feel bored and anxious when attempting to learn something. Interact and communicate with others is a good way to build a fun and positive learning environment, and most people are more than happy to share their tips and experience with those who are just beginners.
Desk Research
Market
With the general increase in national income and the growing demand for knowledge, the market size is expected to reach 67.5 billion yuan in 2021.
Market size of knowledge paying industry in China from 2017 to 2021
In 2021, the number of paying knowledge users in China is expected to hit 418 million people
Number of users paying for knowledge in China from 2017 to 2021
Insight
In this era of information abundance, reliable channels of information have become an important asset for people to acquire knowledge. Numerous people have been enhancing their skill sets by paying for knowledge online.
Demographic
Age distribution of paid knowledge users in China 2020
Monthly income distribution of paid knowledge users in China in 2020
User profile - knowledge-paying users are mainly those over 30 years old, and their monthly income is generally under RMB10 thousand (USD 2 thousand). Users’ demand for the quality of online knowledge has been increasing year by year. In the future, with the continuous improvement of the specialization of knowledge-based payment products, the user group is expected to penetrate into higher-income groups.
User Research
Qualitative Research
We interviewed 10 users, mainly to understand their problems when they wanted to learn about other industries, new skills or change jobs.
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In what way do you feel about paying for knowledge (or paying for advice)?
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What do you think is the biggest challenge when you want to dig deeper into an industry?
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What bothers you the most when you want to change jobs?
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What kind of research do you do when you change jobs?
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What factors do you look for when you communicate with industry experts?
Quantitative Research
We collected some basic information from users through online surveys, and we got 25 valid responses between users aged 20-50.
What do you do professionally?
How much are you willing to pay for an hour expert session?
Are you willing to pay for an expert consultation?
Where do you usually learn new knowledge and skills?
Insight
This questionnaire helped us to get a clear picture of my users' willingness to use it and the problems they face. I learned about the difficulties they encountered when changing jobs or leaning something new, such as choosing information and the limitation of accessing channels when acquiring professional knowledge. As the questionnaire showed that users were interested in consulting paid apps, which increased my confidence in the Protalk and gave me other ideas, I will endeavor to help users resolve problems and save time.
Empathy map
Persona
Problem Statement
PS1- Emma is a busy freelance writer who needs to find the best way to organize and declutter her space because a messy environment make her overwhelmed and inefficiency at work.
PS2 - Nicola is a graduate student who needs to get some advices about her job hunting because she hasn’t figured out how to transition from a student into the work life.
PS3 - Johnny is a business analyst who needs someone can help him change his career smoothly in data science because he has lack of experience in this new filed.
PS4 - Claire is a housewife who needs to talk to someone about her mental health because she has trouble sleeping and get upset than usual, she is unsure how to reach out for support.
PS5 - James is a marketing intern who needs to know how to make good coffee at home because he interested in everything about coffee, and he wants to be a coffee expert.
User Insights
User Needs
To connect with experienced people who can share their experience and knowledge with others.
To get advices for career development, career change.
To learn new skills quickly and professionally.
User Goals
To meet with experts who can diagnose, treat depression and offer psychological support.
To get help with solving daily life problems or work problems.
To learn about interest or finding hobbies.
To network or bond with people who share similar interests.
Competitive Analysis
Goal & Methods
Objective: We audited industry competitors to understand how the Portalk app compares
Research Questions: Are they attracting the audience that they say are speaking to? How does their app look and feel? Does the design complement the product? Will the user get confused as they navigate through the app?
Procedure: We review these aspects of each app design: Audience, First thoughts, User interaction, Visual Design, Content
To build a Portalk app with a solid and comprehensive foundation, We invested on existing similar and competitive apps in the market. We fully understood the services, design ideas and user feedback provided by these apps. We evaluated some of the functions that attracted the most attention in the user reserch and determined the functions that the Protalk app should pay attention to and the deficiencies that should be remedied. Protalk can surpass other applications and bring a better experience to users.
Finding 1. These apps are all platforms for knowledge sharing, but they provide slightly different services. Hobify is mainly social-oriented, and users can connect with people nearby who have similar interests and hobbies. The Wyzant and Ascendr are more like a Knowledge Marketplace, offering 1-to-1 courses where users can find mentors in various fields to learn. The difference is that the user group of Wyzant is mainly students, so the services provided are more like tutor courses. In contrast, the users of Ascendr are older, and the consulting content provided is more focused on business aspects, such as professional sessions and live audio.
Finding 2. In terms of usage and features, users prefer a simple experience. The research feature allows users to find the experts corresponding to the problem being solved; the mentor list displays let users select the same type of experts by browsing; the mentor's profile page enables users to understand more clearly the background of the expert and the services provided, which problems they are specialized in solving, and provides rating and review to strengthen the user's sense of trust.
Finding 3. These apps both show mentors, aviators and icons; more pictures provide users with a more pleasant visual experience. Wyzant has a more professional design style, while Ascendr has more of its brand image, with a fashionable and fresh feeling, the font style of the page is more personalized, with lots of white space in the layout, the page is neat. The content is not busy, while the images of the Hobify are quite big looks nice, but the content is relatively lacking, requiring some more details to be filled in.
How Might We?
In addition to the above competitor analysis, I did card sorting and HMW (How might we)questions to generate as many ideas as possible for potential solutions to the identified user problems. We brainstormed the value advantages of my product.
Protalk will combine these competing products' advantages and innovate; our users have a broader age range, covering people from 18-55 years old. In the future, these experts will not only be the users' mentors but also their friends, and the content of chatting and consulting will include career, growth, life, interests, and other directions. The design will make users feel close while feeling professional and trustworthy. The concise search function and detailed expert booking process will allow users to skip tedious steps and save precious time.
Storyboard
We created a series of frames that visually describes and explores a user’s experience with the app. The storyboard focus on booking a session scenario that followed by problem statement and goal statement.
User Flow
Prototype
Lo-fi Ideation
After completing a few preliminary sketches, we realized that some of our ideas and layouts were flawed. Still, the good thing was that we could discuss some very vague ideas quickly, but we were also able to use those ideas to generate more discussion and quickly filter through all of them simultaneously.
Affinity Diagram
After usability studies we organized research data into groups with common themes. We transferred the feedback that come from our research study participants onto the individual sticky notes. Then, we clustered the observations into groups. This method help us group together research insights so that we can further understand and define the problems in our initial stage of design.
Iteration
Before
Before
After
After
FInal
FInal
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Optimized the function of Filter to allow users to adjust the price and distance options by sliding the buttons more flexibly according to their requirements, making the whole process more interactive and user-friendly.
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Categories have been set up with a hierarchy and larger icons to make the key buttons clearer and easier for users to click.
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Experts List has been optimized, from sliding left and right like a list before to displaying more mentors down more clearly, which is more in line with the current smart operation and more appearing.
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The app has added a selection section; users can use the selected theme to indicate the specific type of mentors, and quickly locate the content they want, to maliciously increase the stickiness of users to a large extent.
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Search bar was moved to the top of the home page and placed in the most conspicuous place. Many users like to go straight to the topic and search for the content they want with one click.
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Changed the feedback mechanism of user rating from 10 points to 5 points by star rating, which is easier and more popular.
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Added the function of the positioning system and selected cities so that users can select the mentor in the same city or closer by distance filtering, which is convenient for offline consultation.
Style Guide
The primary purpose of this design is to convey a professional but energetic feeling, so a dark blue color was chosen as the primary base color, and a small amount of orange was added to brighten it up. The font chosen is also easy to recognize, and typography type; the whole design is mainly flat style, add a small amount of illustration, hopefully, can bring a professional and trustworthy feeling to the user.
Emotional Version
This page will be shown when users encounter errors with the app, such as blank history, unsuccessful payment, or network failure.
Feature
Home browsing
Users can find a mentor, by browsing each category, recommended or search bar on home page
Search
Users will get the all information here by their searching. There were grouped as all, people, and topics. Users can also filter content items into each category.
Choose a mentor
and request
Mentor Profile page shows the various topics they specialize in, the consultation fees, their background, and reviews. First choose the topic user want to communicate, and then they can pick the way to chat with.
Pay, message
and call
Users will get the payment after request accepted. As soon as the users paid the session, they could message to set a call
Final thoughts and Takeaways
The most important thing I learned in developing this app is How do we achieve design goals by utilizing cognitive biases? People tend to be irrational when they think or make decisions. Cognitive bias also impacts users' attention and behavior in using products. Hence, reasonable utilization of users' cognitive bias in the page design process can lead them to pay attention to the information they need much faster and improve their efficiency in meeting their goals, which in turn enhances the product's user experience.
While using an app, users typically do not browse all the information because each interface is overflowing with massive data. Therefore, drawing the user's prompt attention to crucial details in the interface is essential. We, thus, combine some common theories of cognitive bias to attract users' engagement: inattentional blindness, the exposure effect, Picture Superiority Effect, Von Restorff effect
For instance: When users are dealing with a task, they will usually focus only on the current job, they often miss the non-eye-catching images that appear in other intervals. Based on the inattentional blindness, we moved the search history below the current search area, which resulted in a nearly 10% increase in the overall click rate of the search history module and a significant increase in the general overall click-through rate of search page conversion. So, the design inspiration from this user cognitive bias of inattentional blindness is to place essential features where the user's vision is most likely to go when performing the current task to increase significantly the likelihood of these features being noticed
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