Eva Studio

Eva is a virtual assistant for those who work from home

DETAILS

Project Type: In collaboration with Jieying Yang

Duration: 8 weeks

Skills Strengthened: UI/UX Design, Storytelling, Voice prototyping, VUI Design, Speculative design, Video editing and animating

Goal: Voice assistants, such as smart home assistants, have proven to be usable and valuable enough to support a large initial adoption. How might we design Voice UI to help people who work in non-traditional offices, such as their homes? (Note: Project created right before the pandemic)

ABOUT

Many of those who work from home experience the difficulty of having to juggle a work-life balance, as well as conflicting schedules, meetings, and errands.

Currently, smart home devices and assistants are geared toward helping users live more comfortably during their leisure time, or improve home security.

We wanted to create a voice assistant that would be integrated into people’s smart homes to better help them work from home. This way, Eva can assist people in ways similar to a personal assistant at work would.

Eva Studio Product and Experience video created by Sherrie Guan and Jieying Yang

What is Eva Studio?

Eva Studio comes as an earbud, a renaissance of the early 2000s’ wireless Bluetooth headsets. Eva is the virtual assistant who helps you throughout your day, managing your schedule and reminders via connection to your smart home system, as well as work emails and calendars.

KEY PRODUCT FEATURES:

  • Keeps track of your schedule, reminding you before work events and deadlines

  • Summarize received emails and creates draft reply

  • Helps you prepare for, record, and feel comfortable during meetings so you can focus

  • Communicates with your other smart home devices, taking care of seemingly menial tasks

ux research

ux research

I started by developing personas for Masons to gain a better understanding of their target audience and who I was designing for. My research included an analysis of the current men's fashion market, trends in everyday classic clothing, and the demographics purchasing the two styles. To further inform my design, I conducted informal interviews with members of these groups, including hypebeast fashion influencers and a sartorial magazine photographer. These conversations allowed me to create a customer journey map for the desired user experience for someone shopping on the Masons website.

Personas

Customer Journey Map

information architecture

Before beginning the design process, I had a lengthy conversation with Wendy from Masons to fully understand the company's pain points and business needs. I used the information gathered from my research and client conversations to create the site's information architecture, which I then pressure tested with fellow interaction designers who specialized in IA.

site map

From there, I created a site map and began designing wireframes for various pages and features, including the live stream experience, live chat, 3D virtual showroom, launches/ raffles, user account, and loyalty program. I also designed the main purchasing flow for mobile, desktop, and tablet devices. The design went through three rounds of iterations based on client feedback before it was finalized. Overall, the project was a success, and the client was delighted with the final UX design.

Final Designs

I conducted research on the Chinese app RED in order to design the live stream feature for Masons. Wendy informed me that Masons' account had been suspended due to strict advertising guidelines on RED. My background as a professional gaming live streamer on Twitch.tv allowed me to draw on my first-hand experience as both a moderator and viewer on a popular live streaming platform to design engaging experiences for both the Masons team and their audience.

Live Stream

Main Flow

As the project neared completion, I closely collaborated with Three60 to integrate their style guide and images into the prototype's product listing pages (PLPs) and product detail pages (PDPs). The final design for the PDP, shown on the right, reflects Three60's UI iteration. Once all screens had been updated by Three60, I assisted with the development handoff process alongside the engineer.

To design the 3D virtual showroom, I researched existing examples in the fashion retail and real estate industries to understand the best practices for creating an immersive shopping experience that allows customers to explore a virtual space as if they were physically present. Three60 photographed the assets at the brick-and-mortar store to use in the virtual showroom.

Using this information, I developed wireframes and a store map that emphasized a welcoming and interactive design. The Masons team and I worked together to ensure that the product modals in the virtual showroom could be easily updated with each season's new collections, while the store photos remained constant. The final design included interactive touchpoints where customers could explore and interact with the products on display.

Reflection

I thoroughly enjoyed owning the UX initiatives of this project and focusing on purely the UX research and design. It was rewarding to meet the client’s business goals and requirements by creating new web designs that adhered to the best practices in UX design, usability, and heuristics.