Glazy Redesign

Glazy is a popular source for glaze recipes and community support. I initially found Glazy intimidating with its overwhelming library and experienced users with advanced knowledge, so it took a few months of additional research before I felt comfortable mixing my own glazes. While many features are still too advanced for me, I wondered how I could improve the user experience for new and returning glazers.

Role: Researcher, UX/UI Designer

Timeline: June 2024-Present

Problem

Glazy is an internationally accessed recipe sharing tool developed by Derek Au and is continually updated for its users to have a seamless experience searching, saving, mixing, and troubleshooting glazes. It is accessed by desktop, tablet, and mobile, and has a limited feature mobile app to use offline.

With many great features and contributors, Glazy currently has over 2,000 pages of posts and over 17,000 glaze recipes. That’s a lot of information to sift through. For new users, there is a learning curve to getting started with Glazy, and while they have a free Glazy Help site, it isn’t easily accessible. With so many new potters and home studios, Glazy could be transformed into a more accessible and welcoming first stop for new and experienced glazers alike.

Objectives:

To enhance the community aspect of Glazy

To improve usability of My Studio features

To welcome and inform new glazers with tools to get started

Discover

First, to validate the need for a redesign, I explored Glazy's desktop and mobile site. I reviewed support posts and the reviews of the Glazy app. Here are some examples of what I found:

Next, I explored direct competitors and found that Glazy was unmatched in terms of its community and database of glazes, however it has shortcomings in features like education, documentation, and troubleshooting compared to its competitors.

Competitive Analysis

For the last exercise in the define phase, I completed a heuristic evaluation to further identify key problems and improvement opportunities.

Heuristic Evaluation

Define

After the discovery phase, I identified two user personas, Shane the new glazer and Carrie the experienced glazer, to represent two types of individuals who use Glazy with differing existing knowledge bases. Through journey mapping, these user personas helped me define the needs and preferences of Glazy's users.

Using all the data collected thus far, I organized ideas into an affinity map to group the different types of ideas that were generated. This allowed me to gain a better idea of the different features users were looking for.

Ultimately, through this extensive research I identified 5 key problem areas and 5 key opportunities to address in my redesign.

Problem areas

Website is not welcoming or engaging for new users, overwhelming unorganized material/content

Too technical for beginners

Limited community engagement

Restrictive mobile app

User interface and visual consistency

Opportunities

Create a user dashboard for new and experienced users

Provide easily accessible educational material for beginners

Increase community engagement with direct messaging, reviews, answered FAQs

Update mobile app for interactive features: explore, engage community, learn/discover, shopping checklist, calculate recipes, and upload posts*

Improve overall UI for improved overall design quality*

*Due to time constraints, these opportunities will be addressed as a seperate project

How might we improve upon Glazy to be an easily understandable, efficiently accessed, and community oriented one-stop-shop to learn and document user's glaze journeys?

Guiding principles: Intuitive, informative, scannable

Design

Since the heuristic evaluation revealed navigation design concerns, I started by rebuilding the current Information Architecture (IA) to understand its structure and explore its features.

Current IA

Next, I mapped out a new, simpler, IA and created user flows for my novice and experienced user to visualize how they would interact with this new IA differently.

Novice User Flow

Experienced User Flow

Usability test, narrowing down the scope of this project based on user feedback and time constraints

I created low fidelity wireframes for a majority of my design ideas, taking inspiration from social media sites like Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook for the Community feed, Wix and Squarespace for Dashboards, and Relias and Skillshare for Learning Modules. I quickly realized that I was biting off more than I could chew. Not only did I have time constraints when it came to a full website redesign, I was also aware that if my usability tests were too broad or long (if I asked too much from my participants who also had time contraints), the quality of my feedback would worsen. So I reduced the number of features I wanted to test to 3-4 items, developed them into mid fidelity designs, and created a 3 usability tests through Maze. co to see how users responded to my initial ideas.

Mid fidelity wireframes

1. Recipe Cards

Problem:

Solution to test:

2. MyStudio

Problem:

Solution to test:

3. Learning Center

Problem:

Solution to test:

Usability test results, receiving unexpected feedback

As a less experienced glazer, I needed to test my wireframes early on to ensure I was headed in the right direction. I included survey and prototype questions to validate the need for the redesign and I tested these changes with the 3 usability tests.

This is what I found: the type of user that responded to the test were predominantly experienced at glazing and using Glazy. This led me to believe that most Glazy users are long time users which is why polls showed that the most commonly used features were the Recipes, Calculator, and MyStudio, all functions of those who are using Glazy to actively make glaze. I found that experienced users liked the idea of the introducing a dashboard view and a usable inventory, and new users like the getting started and safety basic guides. A theme in the test responses was that the redesign was oversimplified and didn't take into account the nuances of glaze chemistry.

Most notable feedback to improve upon:

-recipe cards with responses

-More that production and testing

-inventory update

-improve readability of learning center

I used the feedback to specifically update the wireframes that the participants were tested on, and broadly to improve upon the designs that weren't tested. Below is an overview of the key changes I made the the original Glazy design.

Next up is the meat and potatoes of this lengthy project redesign. I took 4 features from Glazy based on previous user needs and requests, and iterated them to design a more user friendly and welcoming experience for Glazy users.

Design consideration #1

Discussion board, encouraging community and new member capture

The discussion board was cluttered and overwhelming. Key changes include: (1) removed the glazes so that the community would be a hub of conversation and featuring user's glazes, (2) allowed users to continuously scroll through the feed, and (3) featured recipes to celebrate successful tests and promote frequent engagement and interactions. The Glaze page was moved to the primary menu because users desired easier access to exploring glaze recipes, especially when navigating from the MyStudio page. This created an easy flow for new users to access the About page and be encouraged to join as a member.

Original

Redesign

Design consideration #2

Recipe cards, promoting exploration and readability

The original recipe card had a 3.6 star satisfaction score, I updated the card to be minimalistic and readable, taking inspiration from existing social media modules. The first iteration that I tested dropped to a 3 star satisfaction score, participants found that too much information was removed. For the second iteration, I adjusted the recipe card accordingly to include all necessary information and actions that users desired.

original, iteration 1, iteration 2

Original

Iteration 1

Iteration 2

Design consideration #3

Dashboard feature, giving experienced users a customizable overview of their studio

major updates after first iteration was recents and private, as well as activity

Original

Iteration 1

Iteration 2

Design consideration #4

Learning center, helping new users understand the basics of glazing

The feature that inspired this project was a learning center for Glazy. It isn't a replacement for glaze courses, but intended to be a starting point and free reference for inexperienced glazers. I originally placed it as the first page under Tool, but with so many experienced users on glazy, it made more sense for them to have the Learning Center accessed via the primary menu, especially because it acts as a "Help' page. The other major change I made to the Learning Center in response to feedback was to weight the modules for a natural flow from getting started to advanced glaze concepts.

An interesting finding from my usability test was that experienced users were especially critical of the Learning Center. Responses criticized that glaze chemistry couldn't be simplified to learning modules, however, the information in the modules were all taken from the existing Glazy Help Center, it was just presented in a more fun and approachable way. Having this insight helped my discern how to use the feedback from the usability test wisely.

The Glaze Finder button leads to a cool questionnaire that helps introduce and teach new users how to get started.

BONUS: Design consideration #5

Automatic updates of My Inventory, an unfinished design consideration

This design feature was the most difficult challenge, it is a project on its own. There are glimpses of its early development in my earlier wireframes, so I wanted to share my progress and continue the design process after I gain a more experience as a designer.

A challenge in designing these screens was creating a seamless experience where the user does not have to perform dimensional analysis or calculate when new material is purchased or material is used to mix a batch of glaze. Some of the objectives for My Inventory include:

1. to be useful and connected with automatic calculations from mixing glaze and purchasing glaze

2. to be easy to add and subtract inventory without having the use think about the math, yet also having few enough clicks so that it didn't feel overwhelming to update inventories

3. to contain moments of joy, since taking inventory isn't a fun process, details like added to inventory for suggested purchases, the Do I Have Enough? module, and Testing Module can give participants a boost of serotonin with excitement to glaze.

Original

Redesign

Visual Identity

Responsive Screens

I designed with a resposive screen and opportunity to build out Glazy's app in mind.

While this redesign focuses Glazy's web presence, I couldn't help but mock up some app screens of the shopping list, which where I imagined it would be most utilized. Since the glaing process is very involved, with features like the dashboard, inventory, recipes, and communities, it makes sense to have a built-out app for frequent users.

Deliver

Summary

Redesigning Glazy was a challenging project where I took a well loved product and redesigned it to be more welcoming, community oriented, and usable. With this redesign, returning and new users will find the content they are looking for faster, and will have an easier time learning and teaching alongside one another.

During this project, I learned how overwhelming it can be to tackle an extensive existing site, and how important it is to rely on its users to guide my redesigns. While I was able to achieve my objectives, it was hard to stay focused on them when I discovered other pain points during my research. Being aware of various pain points helped me keep future scalability in mind, but it also complicated the design process, especially when it came to differentiating the responsive mobile-tablet-desktop vs a future Glazy App redesign. I had to consider which features made more sense for App exclusive access. Moving forward, I will practice designing mobile first.

Ultimately, I completed the redesign of the recipe cards, community discussion page, user dashboard, and learning center. If I had more time, I would run another usability test to confirm my designs and fully redesign the site.

Design Opportunities:

Automated inventory calculator to simplify adding and subtracting materials
Recipe stories to build excitement in the community about results and new recipe development
Finish designing each learning center module
Interactive tools and reference material
A new visually appealing version of the Glazy Mobile App to be a convenient source for users to access