Client Form
Last year, with the start of the global pandemic, a lot of people around the world started skating. The longer the pandemic lasted, the more people got into skating. In Saudi, the skating community is very small right now but it’s growing quicker than ever. Saudi skaters have been doing some incredible tricks on their skateboards and whenever it felt safe to travel, those skaters traveled between Dammam, Riyadh and Jeddah just to skate and film more collaborative videos to post on instagram!
Along with the pandemic, some people started their own small businesses that showed their passion to design street fashion. Skateboarding is part of street culture. A space that gathers skaters and artists together is needed to flourish this community in Saudi.
Project Overview
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Saudi Skate Mag is an online magazine that focuses on growing the skateboarding community and the street culture in Saudi.
Problems
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Saudi skaters lack a platform to showcase their skills.
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It’s hard for local street merch designers to find talented people to sponsor on a huge platform such as instagram.
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There’s no place for people to find skate events.
Task
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On this project I took on the role of a UI/UX designer.
My responsibilities included: User Research, Visual Design, Prototyping, Usability Testing, and developing high fidelity mock ups.
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Approach / Strategy
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I knew this tool had the potential to help skaters, bot professionals and beginners. To get more insights into the skaters mindset, I interviewed skaters that I knew. Ali is an avid skater from Jeddah that has been skating for almost 8 years, and Wejood is a beginner skater who started skating last year. The findings are documented below.
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Ali's responses to the interview questions
Wejood's responses to the interview questions
After doing these qualitative interviews. I did my own research, I found out very few websites that sold skateboard gear in Saudi, and none of them support or share Saudi youth skills.
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I started sketching the website with meeting the users (skaters) and owners goals in mind. Below are my very first sketches of the website
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Low Fidelity Wireframe
Next, I started working on Adobe XD to produce better wireframes and prototypes to show to the stakeholders and make the first users test before designing the final UI for the website.
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Mid Fidelity Wireframe
I prototyped the mid fidelity wireframes to test the users flow. Below a video that shows the prototype
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Prototype testing
I took all the feedback into consideration and I started working on the final UI design for the website. I started with the typography and colors. Green represnts Saudi and Black represents action.
Hi Fidelity Wireframe
Hi Fidelity Prototype Video
Solutions
Saudi Skate Mag homepage shows the logo and menu items in the center, then featured products. The users said they wanted to see something that will lead them to the shop other than the "Shop" menu item, and the stakeholders wanted to make profit off the website. So, the best solution was to presented some of the items on the homepage in an attractive way that isn't too distractive. Then are represented the other sections discussed with the client, which are the video player, featured skater and artists, and lastly the calendar with the most important event of the month taking the biggest space.
Impact & Future State
After representing the final UI design to the end users, they were thrilled I was to incorporate their feedback into the website. Some users suggested to add a section for "Skate Spots" so it would be much easier to find one around their area.
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Taking a deeper dive into this idea, I thought having a sections with a map with a point to each added skate spot would be a great addition to the website.
Project Retrospective
This application is still in it's initial conceptualization phase and has a lor of potential once a brand is created. I imagine the next phase of Saudi Skate Mag would involve more user testing and fleshing out some of the polished functionality. I think I had this moment where everything just "clicked". As I continue to design other solutions, I hope to remember that this is the feeling I should always strive to.
THANK YOU FOR READING!