Hey, I'm Martins
I design and write UX.
I’m a UX writer who pursued further education to add UX design to my skillset. I approach design with a copy-first mentality, always prioritizing clarity and user-centric solutions in every project.
I’m a UX writer who pursued further education to add UX design to my skillset. I approach design with a copy-first mentality, always prioritizing clarity and user-centric solutions in every project.
Here, you’ll find a showcase of three projects: one personal endeavor and two from my further education. Each project highlights my skills in user research, individual and group work, interactive prototyping, and high-fidelity designs. Dive in to see how I approach problem-solving and create user-centric solutions through the design-thinking process.
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Cycling and working on bikes has always been my passion, leading me to a part-time job as a bike store mechanic. In the workshop, I helped assemble new bikes from suppliers. The assembly required using a tablet app to track daily stats, register new builds, and report issues. What caught my attention was that most mechanics found the app cumbersome and avoided using it as instructed. This sparked my curiosity to understand their challenges and inspired me to create a better solution: the Bikebuild App.
At this stage, I set out to determine the problems the users faced with the existing app version and set goals for the app improvements that would benefit its users and the company.
To grasp the challenges users faced with the original app, I closely observed how they interacted with it and the tablet during their workflow. From these observations, I created the flowchart below, illustrating the app’s role in the mechanics’ tasks and pinpointing the steps that disrupt their workflow.
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To truly understand users’ needs, I complemented behavioral research with attitudinal research through interviews. I spoke with two full-time and two part-time employees to capture the unique perspectives of each group. The goal was to uncover their pain points with the current app and hear out their ideas for improvements in the next version.
From the info gathered in the Empathize phase, the problem statement, the goal statement, and the hypothesis were created.
Our bicycle workshop is experiencing inefficiencies in the assembly process directly correlating with the performance of the assembly app, leading to lower output and worker frustration. While the mechanics are using the app to complete the mandatory build tasks, their frustration with the build elements reduces their motivation to incorporate it accordingly in their work routine.
We aim to enhance the mechanics’ daily routines by implementing an optimized assembly app. We strive to develop a user-friendly digital tool that will help the mechanics work more efficiently while encouraging them to meet their daily goals, contribute to streamlining the assembly process, and increase output.
Improving the app used by bicycle workshop workers will enhance their productivity and morale, leading to an increase in output.
The project moved into the ideation phase, focusing on identifying limitations early to avoid issues within the assembly ecosystem. Key problems include the label printer flow and long app loading times. The printing issue, part of a network build, prevents workshop preference personalization, requiring surface-level solutions. Similarly, the loading time problem, caused by numerous server requests, needs solutions that optimize mechanics’ waiting time. Improvements can be made by enhancing existing features and adding new UI elements.
The task flow for the new iteration of the assembly app covers all crucial stages of the digital tasks: logging in, workshop device setup, choosing order type, item scanning, checking off the task list, interaction with info elements, and task evaluation.
Once the specific user tasks were identified, a low-fidelity prototype was developed using Figma.
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Following a detailed review of user tasks and the establishment of a new visual identity for the Bikebuild App, the high-fidelity prototype was created.
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Bikebuild began as an initiative to enhance an outdated productivity app for a bike assembly workshop. Mechanics were frustrated with its poor user-friendliness and lack of helpful features. Auditing the old app’s user flow and interviewing employees revealed key improvements to be made. The new Bikebuild App now boosts user satisfaction and productivity with features that guide workflow steps, assist with tasks, and facilitate communication for better knowledge exchange.
Despite its challenges, the Bikebuild case study unlocked creative problem-solving opportunities. While technical issues like printer network set-up and server speed need deeper solutions, the improvements met most user needs. Mechanics’ desire for direct customer feedback remains a future research topic. The motivational elements also hint at potential gamification. Overall, Bikebuild proves that user-centered solutions are achievable even in constrained environments.
Ecochamp emerged from a team project in a UX/UI design further education course, where the group tackled the challenge of informing consumers about sustainable and efficient resource utilization. The team developed an innovative digital solution to promote sustainable practices and efficient resource use.
Through extensive research and exploration, the team investigated existing recycling apps, analyzed current recycling statistics, gathered crucial knowledge on German recycling facts and laws, and identified potential target user groups.
For deeper insights, the research team surveyed online participants to collect information on their recycling habits, knowledge, and preferences. The results were gathered in an affinity diagram to uncover patterns and common themes, and create a user persona of the target audience.
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Drawing from the insights obtained during the empathize phase, the project team formulated a problem statement, goal statement, and hypotheses. These served as guiding principles for the next phases of the project.
Charlie, a 30-year-old living in a German city, is dedicated to waste prevention and environmental protection. She separates her waste at home but believes the current recycling process could be improved. She wants a simpler and quicker solution. Charlie is frustrated by the lack of transparency in the system and the absence of incentives or added value for her efforts, which reduces her motivation.
Our objective is to assist Charlie, a 30-year-old environmentally conscious resident of a German city, in enhancing his/her waste prevention efforts and expanding his/her knowledge of waste separation and recycling. We aim to create a transparent and user-friendly digital system that enables Charlie to separate waste more efficiently while also motivating him/her with tangible incentives such as rewards or paybacks. By focusing on Charlie’s needs and preferences, we seek to improve his/her experience with waste management and recycling and inspire others through her environmentally conscious behavior.
With a solid grasp of the challenges and objectives, the project moved into the ideation phase. The team employed the Walt Disney Method to collectively brainstorm and sort ideas for the MVP version of the product.
The ideation phase was concluded with the team agreeing on a software solution in the form of an app—Ecochamp. Ecochamp would facilitate positive recycling habits with informative and community-based features and gamification-driven incentives.
The MVP features were divided into two core fractions—knowledge transfer and community-based interaction.
To get user-centered insights for the prototyping phase, user stories for key functions and interactions in the app were generated. The user stories covered Knowledge Transfer, Community Interaction, Incentives, User Profile, and General. These are the central user stories:
From the user stories, a task flow was composed. The task flow covered the three key sections of the app—onboarding, product scanning, and earning points.
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After the task flow was created, the project moved one step closer to the design phase with the outlining of the user flow. User interactions in the app were noted via wireframes. Three of the key user flow elements—home-screen, product scan, and point redeeming—were incorporated in the low-fidelity wireframe to carry out user tests.
After submitting the low-fidelity prototype for user testing, the team made adjustments to the wireframes based on user feedback. Each team member then worked independently to create individual designs for the app. The task involved developing a stylescape and a high-fidelity prototype to present to other course participants and coaches. Additionally, I drafted an abridged voice chart to establish the brand voice of Ecochamp. The voice chart helps align the early copy with the stylescape and enhances the product concept presentation.
The color scheme and the style scape design were inspired by natural materials and colors often associated with recycling. The stylescape layout represents the user’s journey from scanning the product to redeeming points to becoming the Ecochamp.
Ecochamp originated from a team project in a UX/UI design advanced education course. The group addressed the challenge of educating consumers on sustainable and efficient resource utilization, resulting in an innovative digital solution to promote sustainable practices and efficient resource use. The project offered the possibility to go through all stages of the design thinking process, embrace practical and theoretical teamwork, and encouraged individual creativity.
The Ecochamp project viewed challenges as opportunities to better the user-centered features of the app and find innovative ways to incorporate them. For now, the community-based features remain in the wireframe stage as more research, user input, and technical testing are needed to construct such an interactive feature.
FreiRaum is an app that enables citizens to actively participate in urban planning decisions, build communities, and report or fix problem sites in their neighborhoods. FreiRaum was developed as the final project of a UX/UI design further education course. The 4-person team was tasked with creating a product aligned with the theme of Sustainable Cities and Communities, ensuring general access to safe green spaces and public areas for everyone.
To narrow down the scope of the topic, the initial steps involved defining green safe spaces and public areas, identifying the general problems associated with their use, and understanding the limitations these problems pose for solutions. More precise insights from users of green areas and public spaces were gathered through an online survey.
User research revealed that people frequently use parks and public areas for walks and social meet-ups, often reaching these places on foot or by bicycle. Cleanliness in these areas is essential. Over half of the participants believe community involvement in developing these spaces is important, and half would personally participate in maintenance and improvement efforts. However, lack of time is a common reason for non-participation.
Seventy percent of survey participants prefer to be informed about community engagement opportunities through social media or an app. Participants expressed a desire to influence budget allocation, vote on projects, and replace bureaucratic procedures with hands-on solutions.
To advance the project, the team used the survey information to create problem and goal statements, as well as user personas.
In many cities, there is a lack of effective mechanisms for citizen participation in creating and maintaining public spaces. Citizens are often not sufficiently informed about existing spaces and opportunities for co-design. Furthermore, there are no easy ways to report problems in public spaces, leading to a lack of transparency, co-determination, and efficient use of resources.
We aim to create a digital platform that enables citizens to shape public spaces and green areas in their city actively, vote on projects, influence budget decisions, and report problems. We want to promote a vibrant community that actively shapes the future of its city.
The brainstorming session included the discussion of product ideas, features, and their implementation, constructed from limitless to critical perspectives. The team members voted on the ideas that were the closest to realization for the MVP and were the most user-oriented. The team decided to create a digital platform that informs citizens and allows them to participate in future projects through voting or petitions, to participate in projects themselves, and to report problems in their neighborhoods for specialists to take care of. The ideation phase concluded with the team agreeing on a name that embraces the concept of an open community participation platform for creating and improving their surrounding areas—FreiRaum (meaning in German "open space" or "free space").
The team decided that an integral feature of FreiRaum would be an interactive map that would let the users navigate to areas of interest where they can take action in three core functionalities of the app:
The team divided the designing of the three core functions among three team members, with the fourth team member focusing on creating the registration/login and onboarding flow and registration flow. My role in the design process was the creation of the problem-reporting function. To ensure a user-focused perspective, I outlined the problem reporting flow in the form of user stories:
The low-fidelity prototype enabled team members to outline their assigned app flows and gather feedback from others. When combined, these flows showed that components used for the voting and participation features clashed with the problem-reporting function. To avoid giving users the impression that one feature is more important than the other, the team decided to test each section of the low-fidelity prototype separately. This approach allowed the team to obtain genuine tester feedback on each flow and plan to address the component conflicts in the high-fidelity phase.
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After testing the Lo-Fi prototype with users, the team gathered valuable insights for the app’s planned architecture. Overall, users were very satisfied with the interactive map function but noted that the event radius was unclear. They also mentioned that the drawer menu could pop up faster when clicking on the map to report a problem. With this feedback, the team was able to move into the design phase.
The team members were given the task of creating four individual style scapes for the app. My proposed stylescape represented a play on colors symbolizing the urban environment while still keeping associations with public spaces and natural environments.
The final design was voted on by the team members themselves and the course instructors, and it was decided that the design used for the app would be that created by another team member. The UI was built using the Material Design 3 design system.
The team members continued working on their assigned flows to develop the Hi-Fi prototype, focusing on creating a seamless user experience. They resolved the issue where the problem reporting function competed with the participation and voting functions by implementing a modal pop-up window. This window informed users that the problem-reporting function could be accessed by interacting with map locations, making the UI cleaner and allowing users to learn the interface without intrusive assistance.
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Creating FreiRaum was a rewarding journey for the team. It was particularly satisfying to work on an idea that engages the community, fostering a sense of involvement and collaboration among residents. Each team member contributed significantly to different parts of the app, and seeing these components come together to create a cohesive and functional platform was the highlight of the project.
Despite the project’s success, we encountered challenges regarding the seamless integration of features. Each team member worked on different parts, requiring extensive coordination and troubleshooting. Balancing community needs with a user-friendly interface required detailed team communication across all functions. These obstacles, however, provided valuable learning experiences and strengthened FreiRaum.