The Problem:

In order to gain an insight into their future or solve some existing life crisis, it is not uncommon for people to travel long distances and meet an astrologer personally. Sometimes, they know precisely whom to meet, and they get their appointments accordingly. Other times, they don’t have any recommendations whatsoever. On top of it, the COVID situation only made it worse for people to be able to see their astrologers.

The Plan:

In India, astrology happens to be a booming profession, and therefore, it makes sense for us to offer solutions to the above stated issues with the help of a convenient, digital platform called SkyGuru.

It was planned to develop 2 separate apps.:

The Process:

The Research:

The founder of SkyGuru wanted to provide a certain personality to the app, by means of a design that contemporary with some traditional elements.

Over a video conference with the founder, it was stated that the app should be professionally designed, while being visually appearing and user-friendly The app must also encourage new registrations of users, astrologers and payment submissions with ease.

With the content being mainly illustrative, I would also need to keep in mind that, in the given scenario, heavily photographic designs would not quite be appropriate for the brand

These Findings Led us to Research:

• Appropriate UX strategies to encourage from completion.
• Apps with a similar conceptual approach to design.
• Major existing players in the market
• Screen designs of heavily illustrative apps.

Learning:

We facilitated one-on-one interviews with some actual users, in order to ensure that all facets of this issue were studied and addressed.

From Users:

• What are the specifications that you look for, while searching for an astrologer?
• How would you like to interact with an astrologer?
• In what format do you need the information from the astrologer?

From our research and interviews, I observed that users were comfortable having an audio or a video call with their astrologer, and experience, specialty and price were some of the factors that they bore in mind while looking for an astrologer to see.

From Astrologers:

• How do you charge?
• What all information do you seek before providing answers to the client queries and concerns?
• Availability of your time in a day?

From an astrologer’s point of view, I learned that that they charge as per the amount of time spent with a user, and they do require detailed so as to provide solutions.

Define Requirements:

After sharing these observations with the founder and asking them what a successful product would look like for them, it was time to sit with the founder to ensure their requirements were aligned with our findings

User Journey:

We made a visual representation of the user’s journey across all touchpoints of our application, so as to figure out areas of improvement in terms of user experience.

Creating Drafts (Wireframes):

We then moved on to testing and developing the site architecture by wire-framing each screen thus designed. The overall flow of content to each individual screen was important. However, I needed to make sure that there was no confusion when it came to achieving the ultimate purpose of the app

Driving Ideas:

The multiple phases adopted by me for prototyping and testing with our users made the process of developing a viable product all that much easier. I took the key components necessary to address the business requirements and applied them as per the findings that came from the user tests.

As these concepts were fleshed out into high fidelity prototypes, I presented and shared our research and results with the founder to get each concept signed off on.

Final Solution:

After the testing and iterations of prototypes, we came to a final solution:

• We need specific filters for users to find the best astrologer according to their requirement.
• Users can check from a list of astrologers who are available for chat or call.
• Users also wants to get detailed report from astrologers about their future and remedies they can do in their daily life to achieve their goals.
• Astrologers wants to set their availability according to them.
• Astrologers needs detailed information from a user to answer their questions.
• Quickly view status and balance of accounts of astrologers.

App for Customers:

App for Astrologers: