RESEARCH & DISCOVERY

User Research

I went to a Death Cafe with a friend who is involved in the Death Positive Movement, which in a nutshell is just a movement to normalize death and bringing it back into the general conversation. I noticed that a lot of the stress surrounding a loved one's death was not knowing what they would have wanted, and having to make those decisions in a time of crisis. People talked about making those decisions ahead of time but had no idea how to go about the process. This sparked the idea that became After Party. The process began with a survey using Google Forms.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

SWOT Table

A SWOT analysis was performed on I Want a Fun Funeral, My Wonderful Life, and Funeral Wise. While I didn’t find an app that specifically dealt with pre-planning your funeral there are a few websites. When I was digging through the sites I noticed many are posing as funeral planning sites but their actual aim is to sell life insurance.

At I Want a Fun Funeral the goal is to help people pre-plan their funeral through a webinar that you sign up and pay for ($49) to watch on their schedule. The site did include some useful links and information about planning a funeral outside of the webinar. The site seemed outdated and geared toward an older population.

My Wonderful Life was featured on Shark Tank in 2012. The site features the planning process, uploading photos, prepay and even create your own memorial marker. This is one of the sites that wants to sell you life insurance to pay for the funeral. The site seems thorough, useful, and only slightly religious. However, I was surprised it wasn’t mobile friendly.

Funeralwise is a funeral planning website that is everything and the kitchen sink when it comes to post death. It not only deals with planning but also greif, pet loss, funeral etiquette, funding and even features a store. While this site is extremely thorough it makes the process seem overwhelming: there are FAQs, checklists and best practices. However, it is a great resource with a lot of information.

PERSONAS & USER STORIES

Personas

Potential users were interviewed to gain an in-depth understanding of their needs and three personas were created.

User Stories

Based on the information gleaned from users, user stories were created and prioritized.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Site Map & User Flows

A site map was created along with user flows guiding how the app would be laid out.

WIRE FRAMES

Beginning with sketching for mobile, wire frames were created in Figma.

BRANDING

Brand Identity

After Party was the name of the app from almost the beginning of the process, so when I set out to do the branding I knew I would be working with the initials AP and that I wanted a color palette and scheme that would be upbeat and fun. I started by sketching out some logo options and came up with a connected style ap.

The feedback from user testing was that the logo looked like a wilted flower so the logo was redesigned to be this mark:

STYLE GUIDE

Typography

For typography I looked at a few different choices but ultimately chose Libre Franklin for its simplicity and symmetry.

Prototype

User Testing

I decided to use Figma to create the prototype. I’ve used Invision before and had used Figma to prototype smaller projects but I was curious to see how it would work using the component feature.

Once the prototype was created it was used to do user testing. User testing yielded the following results that were implemented to improve the application:

Several people mentioned that the logo looked like a wilted flower and wondered if that was what I had intended. The home button was on the bottom right of the tool bar, when people expected it to be on the left. People wondered how to save their entries or if they would be automatically saved. Too many CTA on the letters and video page was confusing. People also mentioned they would like to know where they are in the process.

Updates:

• The logo was updated from the wilted flower to the current logo people, many mentioned reminded them of new beginnings.

• The home button moved to the left, and the camera option was deleted.

• Update buttons were added to the text fields for people to save their work.

• The buttons were updated and outline buttons were added to ease the CTA confusion where there were several buttons.

• A tracker was added to the bottom of each screen so you can see how far you are in the process.

Future Considerations

After Party is an MVP and in order to fully develop the application there are a lot of areas that could be flushed out while still keeping the app streamline and simple. The main area would be to create the curator log in area, where the curators would get access and information to the plans of the person who chose them. You could include local searches for locations or funeral directors, possibly with reviews. Also I think it would be helpful to include links for resources to produce a will and other documents for users who don't have them.

CONCLUSION

Going into this project I wanted to include every little possible thing that could help someone pre-plan their own post mortem experience but through research and user testing I found that the important piece would be able to distill the process down to something easily digestible for the user. I used the survey to understand which pieces were most important to the user and wrapped the app around those items. In our culture death and talk of it is mostly avoided at all costs so to interest people in planning for it the process should be simple not overwhelming. Creating an MVP for this project really helped to cut out the unneeded items and flesh out the portions that were the most important.