• • Redo Guru is a web application which facilitates video or text chats between homeowners and home improvement experts.
• • Homeowners are able to seek affordable professional guidance in order to complete home improvement projects on their own.
• • Redo Guru represents a web application project undertaken during the course of a User Experience educational program.

I hypothesized that homeowners need a way to chat with home improvement experts in order to recieve guidance so that they can complete their home improvement projects on their own.

To test my hypothesis I conducted user research creating an online survey which gathered responses from 21 people. I also conducted user interviews with 4 individuals. The survey yielded some interesting results.

My main goals during my user interviews was to find out how much time homeowners are spending researching their projects, and who they are currently turning to for help. After interviewing 4 individuals about their experiences, I collected the following data:

• • Homeowners utilize a mix of friends, family, hardware store employees, online research and how-to videos to research their home improvement projects.
• • Homeowners may receive inaccurate or conflicting advice from both in-person and online sources.
• • Homeowners have a desire to do projects themselves in order to save money.
• • Homeowners spend hours researching their projects before attempting them, often needing to return to the research phase when hitting a road block.

In order to understand my users better, I created two distinct user personas from the four interviews I did. These personas had different motivations and frustrations. One was more excited to attempt DIY projects on her own. The other was more likely to hire a professional. I was up to the challenge of creating an app that would serve the needs of both types of homeowners.

Through moderated in-person usability testing, I was able to assess learnability and errors for new users as I tested to see if they could navigate through the app and complete basic functions. I tested six subjects of different genders, ranging in age from 18-24 to 40-49.

The results of my testing yielded several observations and user errors. Taking all this data into account, I revised my wireframes to enable a more intuitive user experience. I soon had a new set of high fidelity wireframes with much improved user flows.

I then created a style guide for the app in order to determine a color palette, typography, and the style of images to be used. Once I had these design features down, I created a design system with reusable components that I would be able to easily use in my app design. This ensured consistency throughout the application on both desktop and mobile views, as well as grids and common breakpoints in order to build a responsive website application.