Draw Drills
DrawDrills is a tool for creatives to exercise their skills by completing drills, similar to how a runner would train consistently for a marathon.
Overview
Role
User Experience Designer (Team of 4)
Tools
Figma/Figjam
Google Workspace
Illustrator
Discord
Duration
Feb–May 24
Problem
The original Drill creation process faced some usability challenges limiting its ability to best help users create and share drills. These challenges included navigation inconsistencies, language clarity issues, and a lack of community-focused features
Redesign Goals
Simplify navigation, improve language clarity, and incorporate new features that enable artists to connect, collaborate, and practice.
Research
User Research • Art Research • Key Findings
The Original Process
In Fall 2023, I was introduced to Draw Drills as part of a class group project. By January 2024, our professor invited two other project members and me to join Arcvale, where we became part of the Draw Drills team. At the time, the web app needed significant updates to prioritize a user-first design approach before the next release.
Audience Research
We interviewed eleven users, ages ranging from 16 to 41, who each have their own preferred mediums. With the feedback from these initial sessions, we gained insight on the most prominent challenges encountered.
Insights and Takeaways
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Users were confused by the terminology and structure.
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Some users requested the option to save prompts to use in later drills
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The buttons lacked sufficient color and style differentiation, making it difficult for users to intuitively navigate
Implementing The Tagging System
We began conducted research on art practice methods and tagging structures used in art schools. We were inspired by LinkedIn, and Pinterest with features like auto-populated tags and recommended tags for better searchability
Ideation
User Flows • Wireframes
Drill Creation with Prompt Library
The initial user flows and sketches for the prompt library integration focused solely on pulling from the users own saved prompts.
The addition of a flow that showed how users could pull public prompts into their drills, showed the type of collaborative environment that could be built.
Tagging System
Our team collaborated with the developers to devise a tag library system. We categorized a list of words that would automatically suggest similar words to users when searching for drills or tags in the community tab. This list was made possible by artist friends and the Arcvale Discord server.
Design
Solutions • Iterations • High-Fidelity
Lo-Fi
Each team member created a wireframe to present then we would discuss the best features from each of our individual iterations to flesh out and put incorporate into the final product.
Main Changes
Tagging System
Tags are linked to keywords and auto-suggested as users type, helping them find drills and connect with artists who post similar content.
Simplified Fields
By eliminating the prompt name field and introducing help buttons, the process is streamlined, reducing steps and minimizing user confusion.
Prompt Library
A Prompt Library would allow users to save and access prompts. This support enables users to share and use prompts from the community in their own drills.
Consolidation
To simplify navigation, drill and prompt information is now consolidated to one page
Navigation
A consistent standard for the buttons made to make the process more cohesive and easy to navigate.
More!
In Spring 2024, Arcvale participated in the Seminole Innovators Showcase to present ongoing projects. We showcased our work on Draw Drills, providing attendees the opportunity to test the platform. During the event, we conducted usability testing by inviting a few people to test an early prototype and share their feedback. We asked some other participants the same set of questions we had previously posed to users of the currently released version. This comparison allowed us to gather insights into user needs and the impact of our design updates.
Drill Creation Redesign
Next...
The Draw Drills drill creation system has been successfully handed off to developers. Each member of the group is working on their new individual tasks, my next focus is designing a notification system. Meanwhile, the team as a whole is also collaborating on improvements to the user profiles and the community page, to create a more interactive and personalized experience for our users.
Reflection
My experience with DrawDrills began with a 2-week group design sprint for my UX class, where we had to redesign the entire site. The next semester I was presented the opportunity to join the real team at Arcvale. Two weekly meetings one with the design team and one with the entirety of the DrawDrills team including the developers and project manager allowed for constant collaboration, feedback, and ideating.
It was challenging to figure out what features would be possible to implement and which ones wouldn't work with the current budget, timeline, or, number of developers. Being able to work closely with the developers and project manager has provided me with has helped me see projects from a wider perspective. The eleven people at the weekly general meetings are students and alumni, many with other full-time commitments, making this process a slow yet satisfying burn.
