Project Scope:

SK8CAD is the world's first open source CAD program for custom skateboard builders. Their motive is to promote learning, engineering, and design thinking skills by providing a tool that is easy for all levels of makers to use in their board making process.

Team:

Jacqueline Baker- UXR & UI Design

Claire Schiekl- UXR

Beau Trifiro- Founder, Open Source Skateboards

Deliverables:

Evaluative Research Report, Style Guide, and hi-fi mock ups in Figma

Laying down the grounds for research: 

Open Source Skateboards is a board building manufacturer, where customers can use his open source program, SK8CAD, to design their boards and order them through his shop. Currently, he has 200+ users using his program worldwide. 

OSS’ main objective is to increase membership subscriptions on SK8CAD.

User Base:

• Hobbyists (Patreon Supporters)

• Small business board shapers

• Educators in classroom settings

Observations:

• How users were interacting with his platform (what pages were visited most)

• How they use it (where they spent the most time)

• How they behave around it (the usability)

Hot Jar Mapping 

1. Forum got the least amount of clicks & Maker Map got the most amount of clicks.

2. No clicks on any donation links.

3. Most clicks on Fingerboard molds(which are unavailable).

4. Not much SK8CAD traffic through the landing page link.

Usability Test Findings:

Finding information on parameters and tutorials:

• 75% failed

• Tutorials were not easily available, but a PDF user guide is.

• Users wanted a search option for any help related tools along with the user guide.

Treejack test:

17 users from 10 different countries took our test.

Goals: 

• Is the site’s organization optimized and streamlined

• To gauge their likelihood of failure or success 

Findings:

• 31.76% of our tasks were performed successfully

• This would help tackle the main goal of converting new subscribers to SK8CAD

• Tutorials and help needed to be at the forefront of SK8CAD

  The UI needed to be simplified for SK8CAD’s parameters

Based off the information gathered from each research method, we began ideating on potential features that would help new users understand build parameters and start creating their own skateboards in SK8CAD:

Open Source Skateboards is currently updating SK8CAD V1.5 based off of our teams recommendations:

“Advanced Mode” toggle switch to show more technical parameters

• Ability to design fingerboards

• Ability to save and load designs (currently not saved in-app... only download and upload).

• Launch a Shape Library feature

Retrospective:

We took the findings from the treejack test, updated our sitemap, and packaged it in a visual document of all of our research findings in Figma.

The Shape Library was launched April of 2023. To view the feature, you can visit the link:

Shape Library

I learned to not let the endless possibilities of design overcome my will to lay out all the facts and listen to what the users wanted, to deliver informed suggestions to the stakeholders in this project.

Thank you to Beau Trifiro, Claire Shiekl for working with me. And thank you to the users of SK8CAD for participating in giving us valued feedback during our user interview process.