Born, raised, and currently residing in the GTA 🇨🇦, I’m a recent graduate of Sheridan College’s Honours Bachelor of Interaction Design (Class of 2020 🎓!).
I like to dabble in a bit of everything; illustration, motion graphics, 3D modelling, traditional painting, etc. No matter what it is, I’m always up for the challenge. 🎨🖌
But of course, my expertise lie in the UX design process and visual design ❤️. I pride myself in putting lots of care into my work, to me the big picture is just as important as the little details.
Thanks for stopping by!👋 If you like what you’ve seen and wanna talk you can find me here:
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* I’m also currently in search of job opportunities, click here to view my resume.
Crane was the result of my year-long thesis project. Email writing is one of those skills that you realize you don’t have until the moment you need it. It’s commonly overlooked despite its importance in our professional careers, which is why I wanted to determine if there was something that could be created to supplement this knowledge gap, especially for those starting to writing emails for the first time.
Duration: 4 months (Spring 2020)
Tools: Figma, Aftereffects
Project Type: Individual, UX Research, Visual Design
These are common questions we might ask ourselves while typing an email, it’s just a block of text, and we’re so used to sending instant messages to others all the time, we should be good at this, so why is it so tough?
Email exists in a strange spot between a formal letter and just another casual online interaction, making it is super subjective, which is why it’s hard to gauge how you should go about the tone, should it be more like a letter or a text message? The only way to know is through trial & error, or trusting in the opinions of others (ie. online resources, friends, etc.)
There are other factors that come into play when people send emails, such as seniority, so for this project we will examine the email writing experience for entry level workers/students.
I conducted interviews and tests on 9 students/working professionals with varying proficiencies in English and email writing experience to examine their thought process when writing process and get a better understand their struggles.
Each participant was asked to compose an email that they would send to a Professor or Superior at work, requesting a referral letter from them, these were the results:
* Overall, a larger majority of participants chose to look at references while writing vs. those who used no writing aid.
From speaking with others, I found that everyone has either learnt to write emails from each other or using unreliable sources online, which is what’s created this confusion and lack of confidence when it comes to email writing because we all have different ideas on what a “good” email sounds like.
After analyzing my research, this is what I’ve concluded to be the biggest contributors for making a less stressful email writing experience.
The most challenging area by far, regardless of english proficiency, was determining the tone of the email.
Solution: Fastest way to learn anything is through examples. If we can provide users with quality examples, they will have a quicker and easier time catching on.
Participants who looked at reference while writing took less time and had better emails as a result.
Solution: Using a reference not only improved the quality of people’s writing, but also makes the process much less anxiety-inducing.
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A major concerns people had was not knowing if their email was "any good”, they also lacked confidence to online resources.
Solution: Providing users with a way to make sure that they can be confident in their email. The more
confidence a user has, the better the email writing experience.
Based on the feedback, the solution needed to fulfill 3 requirements:
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1. Search for Email Samples: Search through a whole database of email samples based on topic/tone.
2. Email Analyzer: Using AI, analyze text to find areas that could be improved as well as receive suggestions and similar email examples.
Having the plug-in directly accessible in the email composer eliminates the need for users to switch back and forth between windows/tabs and it’s also in the only place you’ll really ever
need it.
Here is a storyboard illustrating how someone might interact with the plugin:
3. Template Saver: Save emails you’ve created for use/reference later
4. Email Collection: A place for all the email references saved, organized according to topic.
Since this is a learning/writing aid plug-in, I went for a more “educational” aesthetic, using a calm rustic colour palette as well as a serif font for headings/titles to make users feel like this a “library”. This also makes the plug-in feel more like a trustworthy resource.
The origami paper bird logo helps to push the “library & writing” narrative, based off the idea of birds being letter messengers.
Crane is an in-browser extension that helps users write emails by providing feedback/suggestions, countless references and quick functions to make the writing process quicker and less stressful.
This project gave me the opportunity to really explore and look into different UX process/research techniques. Looking back now with a little more experience, I can see areas where I would’ve tried a different approach/method to find what I was looking for.
It also would've been nice to receive input from email writing pros as well, but due to lack of time and COVID-19 I couldn't make it happen. Overall, completing this project has given me confidence in my ability to make informed design decisions.
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