3D Circuitry App/Website
Based out of Wilmington, Delaware, 3D Circuitry is an educational company specializing in affordable custom-made soldering kits meant to give any inquiring youngster (or adult) the opportunity to learn STEM concepts from anywhere in the world. With the company going on its second year of being founded, the CEO and COO wanted to give their website a redesign as well as build an app to act as a companion for their products. The new application was to be created in a kid-friendly aesthetic with bright and bold colors whilst still retaining the charm of a nifty app. This really gave me a chance to stretch my legs creatively in a new territory and I welcomed the project with open arms.
MY INVOLVEMENT
Content Design
UX & UI Design
Prototyping
The Team
Reese Houseknecht - CEO
Ethan Knoebel - COO
Weeks 1-3
This was the infancy stage of the application’s design, with a lot of the designs mostly being mockups of ideas presented to me by the project leader. Many of these designs are rather rudimentary as we were planning to update or redesign most, if not all of them in coming weeks. With the login pages and startup screen, we wanted to do something simple and easy that a child could figure out, while also abiding by the design rules that the CEO and COO had laid out. The home page kept its same design style from its first iteration which then became the version visible in the image. This design iteration would end up being very useful in the later redesigns that I created in following weeks. The shopping page was way too simplistic in our eyes and needed to be redone as soon as possible. We felt that there wasn’t enough color, pizazz, and/or draw for it to represent 3D Circuitry’s marketplace. Overall, a lot of progress on the “bones” of the app was made, with a lot of the main design aspects for certain pages being carried through to later weeks. This was one of the more stressful portions of time in the project, as I was creating this app’s UI essentially from scratch and was constantly trying to come up with ideas.
Weeks 4-6
This portion of the design process was marked by my use of more vibrant colors in the later designs such as the ARG (augmented reality game) screen, kit pages, and Resources menu page. However, it was still plagued with some designs that didn’t quite make it up to par with what we were envisioning. Fortunately these will be replaced with colorful new pages once the company finishes with the principle photography. Until then, the kit pages are (typically) colorful bright pieces of information that will be triggered within the app whenever you select a kit for the ARG. They display an information blurb to inform the user about the kit that they’ve selected including the difficulty level and its “how to build” cards. As for the ARG, we are currently awaiting the programmer to finish up with the game, so my instruction was to create the UI that the users will interact with outside of the game. I chose to keep the UI bright and interesting for the younger aged user base to keep them entertained/intrigued. I really enjoyed this portion of the design process as I could feel myself beginning to get into the swing of things creatively. It was liberating getting to stretch my legs and create designs that combine elements of my styling with the required design aspects.
Weeks 7-end
This era of design is what my team lovingly refers to as the “era of redesign”. This portion of time working on the application was mostly spent re-creating application pages such as: the Home Page, Shop Pages, and Profile Page respectively. This was also the most fun I’ve had during the project whilst designing. I find that this is because of the total creative control I was given by this point, along with the overwhelming support from my project leader. I personally think that these designs ended up being some of my best and encapsulate the exact vibe and energy that 3D Circuitry wanted to capture in their app. I’ve left the home page redesign next to the old home pages as a comparison of how little things actually changed with that section; we only turned it into a blog hub. As for the profile page, I wanted to do away with the drab gray and lack of attention grabbing details and so we added a lot of color and made the screen much more interactive. We wanted to base the screen off of inventory screens from video games, but revamp it with an educational and a kid-friendly feel. For the shop pages we wanted something easy to use and simple to navigate while also looking cool. We stuck with a drop down menu style and use the promotional artwork as the dividers between the different kits. My project leader also wanted me to create the remaining kit pages for a different version of the shop page that uses the original design from weeks 1-3 whilst still fitting the criteria from the redesign. Overall, I feel that this was the most liberating and comfortable I’ve felt during the app’s design process and I think that’s visible in my work. I was definitely a lot more confident in the designs I was creating and came up with more fun ideas that I thought our users would like.