Mamikas is a social platform for mothers and mothers-to-be. It offers a variety of features, including a forum, a blog, a marketplace, and a membership program. It is a great source for finding support, learning about parenting, and saving money.
Mamikas
UX / UI & Product Designer
(6 Months)
Benchmark Research, User Research, Sitemap, Wireframes, High-fidelity Prototype
Mamikas, a mobile app designed exclusively for mothers and expectant mothers in Turkey. Functions as a supportive community where they can connect, share their experiences, and seek assistance. The app offers a range of valuable features including; expert-authored articles covering various topics, interactive spaces for user questions and advice, and profiles of professionals available for hire with specific expertise. Compatible with both iOS and Android devices, Mamikas serves as an invaluable tool for mothers throughout Turkey.
Considerable amount of effort is made to enhance the Mamikas app. Keeping the existing user base in mind while ensuring a seamless user experience without causing any inconvenience. The goal was to ensure that current users could continue to use the app without any interruptions.
Having various functions such as professional hiring, article reading, and social sharing is causing confused users. There is a need for, simpler information architecture and familiar usage patterns.
Mamikas app already had an established user base. As the usability improvements being made, it was crucial to ensure that existing users of the application were not estranged or inconvenienced.
The information taken from the professional profile is numerous and nanny-focused. For this reason, empty spaces are often seen in the profiles.
Mamikas, being an already existing mobile application, presented a significant opportunity for product enhancement through real user feedback. Verification was ensured through user testing at each stage of the redesign process.
As part of a freelance project, a well-structured 5-month plan was implemented, with a commitment of 10 hours per week. Each page was designed iteratively throughout the process, assigning one month to market research and identifying current usability issues.
Applications of 9 international competitors were examined, discovered exemplary practices and good practices were noted. The most significant findings are summarized and presented below.
Users are more familiar with hashtag usage than topic selection.
Users tend to avoid filling out long information forms.
The filtering feature in hiring platforms are reducing the time to find the person you are looking for.
Having the references section visible on professionals’ profiles increases trust.
Due to the limited number of competitor companies specifically designed for the mother/women community in the market, menstrual cycle apps were also included in the research. The aim was to conduct benchmark analysis to find best-case examples and learn about usage patterns.
Mamikas is an application with an existing user base,hence it was crucial to distinguish the functions and flows on the point of currently being used and not being used before the redesign. Therefore, user motivations and pain points were analyzed.
In the expert analysis, it was found that 16 questions were asked in the previous design in the registration flow of the professionals. Realized the questions were too focused on professional preference and work experience and did not address the group other than the nanny professionals. The study was conducted to reduce the number of questions and to arrange them appropriately for all groups.
In order to better understand the value proposition of the product, netnography and in-depth interview methods were used to comprehend why users need this product.
Earlier product design included 19 different channels for users where they can make their related topic shares. But the high number of channels were giving hard time to users to find what they were looking for hence causing them to follow less channels. When channel names were inspected it is realized grouping order can be sorted like headers. These headers named as topic and channels named as tags. This helped the design to be more familiar with user habits by putting hashtag in play and structures made suitable for expansions in further developments.
Open card sorting workshop is commenced through Miro. Applicants are first given a 15 mins time to sort cards. After that, they are asked what was the thought and reasons behind the sorting when they did it. With this, it was aimed to make a correct group sorting by creating a mental model of the users.
Findings:
An interactive Card Sorting workshop was conducted at UXtweak, involving 8 participants representing diverse personas. Following the workshop, the resulting data was used to determine the optimal grouping strategy.
The results obtained in all studies were evaluated and the key points that should not be overlooked were noted.
The site map was redesigned in the light of the problems identified in the research.
