My name is Marina Pospergelis, and I am a Usability (UX/UI/CX) Researcher, UX/UI Designer working in Hong Kong.
For the last 15 years, I’ve been working in different online and software companies in Russia and last 7.5 years I am working in Hong Kong.
I am a permanent resident of Hong Kong.
My skills primarily include:
1. Full circle of the Usability Research (online and in-person) of the websites and mobile apps (iOS, Android).
What I’ll do is:
- Identify possible issues.
- Identify the study goals and objectives.
- Prepare the test hypothesis.
- Find the study participants.
- Conduct usability research with the participants online and offline.
- Gather usability metrics and users’ feedback.
- Transfer research findings into design ideas and recommendations.
- And even more – you will have proof of the issues and an understanding of how to solve them.
2. Idea, Concept and MVP Tests
The earlier you start testing – the better. This will save you money and time.
In 2016, I conducted an online remote usability test of a design idea for a feature no one was sure about. The main idea was to let the users use it and see the result. Surprisingly, with the help of 6 international users, the feature turned out to be useless, therefore the company saved money and effort implementing it.
Later, I conducted the POC usability test at the Trade Show in Hong Kong and found out a lot of useful things about the tested concept.
3. Expert Review/Audit
Once you are ready to launch your product or redesign it, you may consider an expert audit – an effective way to learn about your design with the help of 1 person – a UX expert.
The only thing you need to provide to me as your auditor is an explanation of the users you want your product to use. Who are they and why they would come to you? Or whom do you want to target and what their goals should be?
I will check your product to see whether you have any issues in usability, workflow, visual aesthetic, and how well your brand stands out against competitors.
The audit can also be conducted on your competitors’ websites to find out their advantages and disadvantages and see if there is room for your improvements.
As a deliverable, the full audit report will be presented with the identified issues and design recommendations and mockups.
4. AB/MVT Testing
The best way to know which design will convert better is to run a test.
If your goal is to test which colour, copy or shape converts better – run an AB test for 2-3 weeks. No need to conduct a full usability study for this kind of task.
Split your traffic into 2 halves where one will see design A and the other half – design B. This way you will have evidence showing which one converted better.
To identify whether you need an AB test, I will check your analytical data, for example, from Google Analytics, to see if any important features have any issues, for example, instead of using the Order button on the product page users click another more colourful or a button with another meaningful copy instead.
To test more visual and structural changes, you should consider the multivariate test (MVT) where the designs you are testing are much more different from another as the opposite than the AB test (where the designs are similar, just some elements are different).
So I can help you identify the issues, goals, and hypotheses, and create designs.
If you are using any third-party tools like Webtrends, VWO or Google Optimize, I can help you set up the tests, monitor them, gather data and prepare a report showing what kind of updates you should consider.
5. User Interface Quality Assurance
One of the ways to see whether your mockups have design issues, wording issues or typos, or any UX problems is to run a round of user interface quality assurance. During this study, I am checking the designs to identify the issues that should be updated before the product will go live. Users don’t want to see typos and grammar mistakes on the websites or apps they are using, because this will be considered a low-quality product.
6. Customer Experience Research (CX)
You may wonder who are the users you want to target for your future (or even ready-to-use) product. What are their goals and tasks, where do they live, and work and what does their day look like?
Similar to usability research, customer research is a face-to-face study with the users, which will give you the answers to all these and other questions.
As a deliverable, you will get the list of personas you should use to build the product that will be helpful and useful to your targeted users.
7. Surveys
Conducting surveys about the different areas of the website or app with many business units involved in the process can be crazy as hell challenging as they would want to know everything right here right now, so my main tactic is to gather initial and more general feedback first, such as whether the users were satisfied or not, ask users to explain their ratings and to share their contact details if they would want me to follow up on their responses, and then, on the next step, gather more in-depth details.
Ideally, these surveys should be ongoing, helping users express their opinion and complaints, and based on the results received I can provide my recommendations on further improvements and future steps, for example, whether the issues are critical and the usability test required.
Anyhow, learning from the users is always helpful, and sometimes you need the quantitative data received from the surveys to identify what should be your next step – should you continue with an AB test or usability research, or something else?
8. Sketches, Lo-Fi or Hi-Fi mockups and Wireframes
When you need to present an idea, fast lo-fi mockups showing structure and functions can be a good start. You can either continue with testing them and make further improvements or present users with wireframes and even beautifully designed pages. Based on the time and budget, and your goal any type of graphics can be helpful. For example, to test the structure of a website you don’t need to have neat and nice pages, however, to make sure the users will feel that they are on a real website, giving them nicely designed even static pages is a better choice.
9. Design Systems, Guidelines and UI/UX standards
Working with developers or other designers may bring up a lot of questions. As well as if the system you are building consists of more than 1 form, you may want to start standardizing it as much as possible. If you have not, start today.
After the audit, I will come up with the document or Figma design system clarifying your topic, for example, the way the buttons should look, or the way the copy should be written and capitalized.
This is a good task that will help you and your colleagues easily jump into the process, or find answers. And for your brand in general, standardized design elements and texts will give them a feeling of a mature and reliable company.
10. Architecture and navigation tests, e.g. Card Sort Test
To make sure your menu is intuitively structured and named properly, a simple workshop with your clients will help. Respondents will be provided with the cards they will use to not only name but also group menu items. To make it easier, one group of respondents can only test the grouping, but another one – naming or each respondent can go through both steps.
As a result, you will see the most popular grouping and naming options and will be able to make quick yet simple adjustments.
11. Empathy maps, storytelling and more
Anything helping you to know your users, create your product working for the users you are targeting, identify any possible issues your product has or an idea your competitors have, we can work on this together, or you can leave me in the room and pick me up in 2 weeks with the result.
12. Create and support your website
Want to launch a personal website, portfolio or e-commerce website? I am here!
I will help you to choose a domain, hosting provider, and CMS, design, post your content and launch your website.
Example: www.krsvhk.com – a luxury, slow fashion, silk brand from Hong Kong.
Tools I am using and very familiar with:
- Figma (www.figma.com)
- Axure (www.axure.com)
- Adobe XD (https://www.adobe.com/hk_en/products/xd.html)
- Adobe Photoshop (https://www.adobe.com/hk_en/products/photoshop.html)
- Miro (miro.com)
- Mockitt (ex Mockingbot) (https://mockitt.wondershare.com/)
- Voiceflow to prototype the voice flows and chatbots (www.voiceflow.com)
- Invisionapp (www.invisionapp.com)
- Zoom/Teams/etc for the online studies
- And other WYSIWYG apps and websites (trust me, they are very similar)
- WordPress (wordpress.org)
- Webflow (webflow.com)
If you want to learn more and test my skills, Say Hi