CITROLOGY
OVERVIEW
About
Citrology is a mobile app that provides a tarot card experience for users.
As a company focused on Social Justice in digital media, Critrology was born with a simple idea since the company seeks to merge the spirituality and social engagement gap and positively influence people’s lives.
It is a whole new product line for Necessary Behavior, and we were facing many challenges when developing a product from scratch to the end.
Challenges
The tarot cards run many card rules. It is a tough task for users who are not familiar with tarot. Additionally, people get used to playing tangible cards from the physical deck instead of the digital tarot world. The challenge of the project is to re-create the scene and bring a realistic experience for all level users to play within a digital deck easily.
My Responsibilities
UXUI End-to-End Design
Duration
12 Months. Feb 2022
Tool
Figma
Company
BUSINESS EXPECTATIONS
Goals
We want our product to become a daily routine for users and not just an impulsive prediction tool. As with many rules running the Tarot Cards, we also want the app to be easy and introduce to a broader audience.
Constrains
Without any previous customer data or research back the design, every decision we make must address the real pain points of target customers. We've also needed to carefully prioritize the product features among many feasible ideas to avoid stakes that might hurt the business opportunity and time costs.
DESIGN APPROACH
Apply the user-centered design to solve the problems and build the product from the discovery phase to the deliver and iterate phase.
MARKET RESEARCH
To kick off the early phase of this project and better understand the market, we start to compare the products in the market. I‘ve researched the tarot book, physical tarot cards, and digital tarot applications with research goals in mind.
Research goals:
What is the most popular way to play tarot?
Find out the product opportunities in the market.
......
Insights:
People are trying to learn Tarot knowledge from physical books and cards.
Digital Tarot applications in the market offer more of an entertainment experience.
USER RESEARCH
We were involved in in-depth qualitative and quantitative research to gather sufficient data to scale down our target users and build user personas.
Research goals:
When and where do people play with tarot? Why?
Why do they prefer to play tarot in the digital world instead of the physical world?
......
Insights:
There are different types of tarot cards. Sometimes, it can be complex, overwhelming, or confusing.
Hard to remember each card drawn from the deck if the reader needs to double-check.
Help the user consistently memorize the cards to be a professional reader.
Guiding the user through the entire reading experience.
Combining physical tarot cards to use.
— Tylor Lucas, Social Media Coordinator, 26 years old
“My best friend and I would spend hours reading each other’s tarot cards. I have my own physical tarot deck at home that I use often and it’s nice to look at their brief descriptions.”
— Miya Lang, Marketing Intern, 24 years old
“While the major arcana are the 22 cards. I can pull one or three cards at most for Yes and No questions, or for past/present/future spread, but beyond that, I’m not really sure what I’m looking at.”
AFFINITY MAPWe collaborate through the affinity map tool to sort data into groups and synthesize research insights to analyze ideas in early design ideation.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
With product development, it has to be scalable in the future. At the same time, it has to ensure the user can complete their tasks with minimum steps in their tarot journey.
INITIAL CONCEPTS
After designing low-fi mockups based on information architecture, I involved other team stakeholders in getting feedback. Then I conducted the initial testing for our app to be confident to digitalize the design.
SOLUTIONS
Citrology allows users to take a tarot card reading on mobile, explore current trends, look at their everyday lives differently, and better understand the future. Also, considering the accessibility of the app, we develop a night mode for users to read more easily in a low-light environment.
Key Features
Tarot glossary
It is a coaching-based feature that helps users learn the meaning of the cards.
Tarot Deck
Simulate the tarot desk in the physical world to provide a realistic reading experience.
Clear guidelines walk through the entire reading process with users.
Favorites
Designing a retrievable reading experience.
Easy to modify the previous reading notes.
User Testing
All the design decisions are based on the research data I collected from the early process and user feedback from the end process. Besides the functionality of the app, I was also paying attention to the "Reading" experience. Considering the physical tarot deck, I designed different ways to bring reality to users and conducted usability testing to make improvements.
Two major improvements
The final decision and improvements are based on the users’ wants in terms of convenience, usability, and speed.
How people read will influence how people interact with the product. I focused on minimizing the user’s memory loading time by making information easy to access.
I created the different interfaces to provide the most realistic experience for users. I tested it out, considering the accessibility and user-friendly of the user feedback.
UI DESIGN
Constrains:
The user interface is also one of the most challenging parts I've taken. There are some constraints when designing it:
Lack of the design system
Aligned existing brand style
Matching the design style of the Tarot Card
To quickly deliver the project. I followed the industry conventions to create a style guide by applying the design system on IOS of Human Interface Guideline and Android of Material Design.
LAUNCH SOON…
The project continues working and developing, and there will be more features coming out later.