TillerXR, originally a comprehensive service provider for virtual tours, encountered significant challenges within the virtual tour software market. As an Austin-based startup known for its innovative approaches, TillerXR observed that existing virtual tour software was often cumbersome and not user-centric, especially for those new to creating virtual tours. This realization came during a pivotal transition as TillerXR decided to expand its business model to include developing its proprietary 360 Virtual Tour building and editing software. This strategic pivot aimed to address the inefficiencies observed in the market—overly complex interfaces, limited customization options, and a steep learning curve that alienated newcomers.
The overarching goal of this UX project was to deeply understand the needs, frustrations, and requirements of virtual tour creators, ranging from novices to experts. This understanding was crucial for guiding the development of TillerXR's software, ensuring it would be both more user-friendly and efficient than currently available options. By aligning the software design with the actual needs of its users, TillerXR aimed to simplify the virtual tour creation process and enhance the overall user experience, thereby setting a new standard in the virtual tour market. The project focused on identifying key user pain points through comprehensive user and competitive analysis, leading to a user-centered design that could adapt to and evolve with real-world user feedback.
The project thoroughly analyzed existing competitors in the virtual tour software market. Key players such as 3DVista, CloudPano, and Kuula were scrutinized to understand their offerings and user interfaces. We focused on their onboarding processes, feature sets, and how they cater to different user expertise levels, from beginners to advanced users. This analysis provided a baseline understanding of the market standards and areas lacking in user-centric design.
User reviews on platforms like G2 and Capterra were systematically scraped and analyzed. This provided an unfiltered view of user likes and dislikes, particularly highlighting issues with user interfaces and customization options. Common themes were identified and categorized to assist in understanding user preferences and aversions.
I interviewed 11 virtual tour freelancers, who varied in their professional backgrounds and experience levels. Each interview was structured to extract detailed information about the participants' current workflows, tools used, and experiences with these tools. Particularly insightful were the comments on the steep learning curves and lack of supportive tutorials, which many users found discouraging.
Surveys
A broader quantitative analysis was carried out through surveys, gathering over 40 responses from virtual tour creators. The survey aimed to identify common workflows, tools preferences, and general satisfaction levels with existing products. Critical findings included frequent frustrations with inefficient thumbnail navigation and slow upload speeds, common pain points among users.
Key Pain Points
Analysis across all research methodologies highlighted several key pain points:
Feature Importance
The competitive analysis and user feedback highlighted features such as intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces, robust support systems, and extensive customization capabilities as essential for enhancing user satisfaction and software usability.
Based on the accumulated data, several personas were developed to represent the varied user base:
Overview
The Design Studio workshop was a collaborative effort involving a multidisciplinary team from TillerXR, including four developers, the project manager (also the CEO), and myself as the UX researcher. Conducted over two days, the workshop’s agenda was structured to transition smoothly from broad ideation to focused design solutions. The first day was dedicated to empathy mapping and idea generation, while the second day focused on refining ideas and prioritizing them using a structured approach.
Empathy Mapping
The empathy mapping session deepened our team's understanding of the user's emotional and practical needs. We constructed empathy maps for each persona using the personas developed from the research phase. Each map highlighted what users said, thought, did, and felt when using virtual tour software. This exercise provided insights into the users’ emotional responses and helped identify unarticulated needs. For instance, the overwhelming feeling of "being lost" in complex software interfaces was a recurring theme for Novice Nellie.
Idea Generation and User Journey Map
During our user journey mapping, we outlined a novice's path through virtual tour software creation, identifying key user stages and brainstorming over 80 design solutions to improve their journey. Creative techniques like "worst possible idea" and "brainwriting" fostered diverse, user-centered ideas. Solutions like simplified onboarding and advanced editing tools emerged to meet varying user skill levels. This meticulous process informed a backlog of targeted enhancements encapsulated in a visual map, ensuring a user-focused evolution for TillerXR’s software development.
Key Takeaways:
Prioritization
The prioritization phase employed a grid technique, where each idea was evaluated based on its feasibility and potential impact on the user experience. This method allowed us to visually plot ideas on a two-axis grid, facilitating a clear discussion on which features would provide high impact with feasible implementation. High-impact, high-feasibility ideas moved to the top of our list, ensuring that development efforts would initially focus on changes that would most significantly enhance user satisfaction and software usability. This process culminated in a prioritized list of features, agreed upon collectively, to guide the next phases of development.
This structured workshop not only fostered creativity and collaboration but also ensured that the team remained user-focused, directly linking UX research findings to actionable design and development strategies.
Lessons Learned
The project underscored several critical aspects of UX research and product development:
Next Steps
The immediate next steps for the TillerXR project include:
TillerXR shifted who they serve with their initiative to create a new software, and this triggered a need for a full brand re-vamp and website redesign.
TillerXR, an Austin-based startup, faced challenges in effectively promoting its Virtual Tour Studio software due to usability and branding issues on its website, which failed to reflect the company's evolution and dual business model. The goal was to redesign the website to clearly showcase the software and the turnkey service, improving user experience and coherence in brand identity. My role encompassed conducting user research, designing the user interface, and developing the final website. This involved competitive research, user interviews, and usability testing to guide the redesign process, ultimately enhancing the website's functionality and establishing a stronger brand presence for TillerXR.
TillerXR stumbled upon significant hurdles related to usability and branding on its website. Initially, the old website was designed to showcase their full-service tour creation service; the website no longer aligned with TillerXR’s evolved business model and expanded offerings with their addition to tour creation software. This misalignment led to a diluted brand identity and a confusing user experience, deterring potential customers.
The primary goal was overhauling the website to seamlessly integrate the software and turnkey service offerings, streamlining the user journey. Enhancing the website's usability and coherence in brand identity was paramount to attracting and retaining customer interest. The process was driven by a thorough understanding of competitive landscapes and user expectations, underpinned by perceptual mapping to identify positioning gaps and opportunities.
TillerXR serves a varied professional user base within the real estate and hospitality sectors, from agents to event planners, all united by their need for innovative virtual tour technology. This group ranges from 25 to 55 years old, seeking to leverage virtual tours for enhanced marketing and engagement. They are innovators and tech enthusiasts looking for reliable, easy-to-integrate tools to produce captivating virtual experiences.
The core needs are user-friendly tools and seamless workflow integration, with a desire for immersive experiences that accurately represent their spaces. Challenges include navigating complex systems, insufficient support, and digital representation limitations.
Key personas exemplify our audience's spectrum:
This project was initiated with a feature prioritization for pages and content that would go into the website’s initial launch. To prioritize the features, I worked with key stakeholders using the personas created to help guide the activity. After the features were prioritized, a card sorting activity was conducted to help organize the website's main content, followed by creating a site map to serve as the foundation of the website redesign project. The main goal of this initial development was to organize the content to have a clear plan for developing wireframes.
With the the stakeholders we collaborated to prioritize pages to be created for the website redesign. I used MoSCoW analysis to help sort out what pages we must have, should have, and could have:
It was most important to ensure that the website prioritized both the Virtual Tour Studio software landing page and the Turnkey service. After the initial launch of the website, more in-depth pages could be developed, along with a plan to create a blog.
Wireframes were developed based on site mapping and feature prioritization, with the main goal of showcasing where the different content would be laid out. This process was designed to be iterative, with the aim of getting feedback on the website's structure to iterate it as needed before developing it further into final prototypes.
One of the main ideas for this phase of the project was to ensure a clear hierarchy and to make distinct sections that would break up the design and make it visually interesting. The focus for the wireframing portion of this project was mainly on desktop and the tablet and mobile wireframes should be developed in the near future.
The final designs were developed with the main goal of showing the actual content within the high-fidelity prototype. One of the main goals was to incorporate a dark theme into the website to support the techy theme of this start-up. In addition, the accent color purple was used to help tie in the brand and maintain consistency among the various pages.
Graphics were designed separately for this high-fertility prototype, and several iterations based on feedback were made to reach this final design before website development. These are the essential pages for the website's initial launch.
The TillerXR Website Redesign and branding project was met with excitement from users and stakeholders. The website was then fully developed and implemented into Webflow.
The next steps are to test the website given the tasks users would need to complete and ensure that the website is user-friendly and engaging. After testing, the website will be fully developed and implemented for this initial launch, and then immediately after, additional pages, such as a demo library and blog, will start to be prototyped.
