{"id":218,"date":"2025-01-10T11:12:30","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T11:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/?p=218"},"modified":"2025-03-06T17:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T17:46:13","slug":"ux-research-and-design-for-bulgarian-embroidary-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/2025\/01\/10\/ux-research-and-design-for-bulgarian-embroidary-website\/","title":{"rendered":"UX Research and Design for Bulgarian embroidery website"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">My Major Project website is going to be for non-Bulgarian people who want to learn more about Bulgarian embroidery and its meaning, and also learn how to embroider themselves. For my Major Project, I decided to create an educational website about traditional Bulgarian clothing embroidery. The website is going to be for non-Bulgarian people who want to learn more about Bulgarian embroidery and its meaning, and also learn how to embroider themselves. Bulgarian embroidery is very old and complex with a long history of changes and developments. I want to represent my country and culture in the best way possible and enhance\/improve perceptions and knowledge. For the duration of this assignment, I will be focusing on just a few very commonly used ornaments and a few that are specific to the region where I am from. This will be Phase 1 for this website as I would like to further delve into more complex embroidery and look into other regions after I complete this master\u2019s programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">Target Audience <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">User Personas<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">With my Major Project website, my target group and user personas would be people with little to no knowledge about either the history and meaning of Bulgarian embroidery or just embroidery itself. I want to provide them with an interesting way to start learning about traditional clothing, which plays a crucial part in history and is significant to people\u2019s lives. In the process of creating my project, I will use <a href=\"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/ux-creating-proto-personas-76a1738401a2\">\u201cproto\u201d user personas<\/a> so that I can better visualise and consider the types of people who would be most likely to visit my website (Jacobs, 2016). I have created <a href=\"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/mp-user-personas-compressed.pdf\">three different user personas<\/a> with different backgrounds to represent those people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div data-wp-interactive=\"core\/file\" class=\"wp-block-file has-link-color wp-elements-344c1136bf27d85a44a021d5fafee52f\" style=\"border-radius:0px\"><object data-wp-bind--hidden=\"!state.hasPdfPreview\" hidden class=\"wp-block-file__embed\" data=\"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/mp-user-personas-compressed.pdf\" type=\"application\/pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:290px\" aria-label=\"Embed of mp-user-personas.\"><\/object><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-96f78b22-39d2-493b-9d5e-076d3210705e\" href=\"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/mp-user-personas-compressed.pdf\">mp-user-personas<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/mp-user-personas-compressed.pdf\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-96f78b22-39d2-493b-9d5e-076d3210705e\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">I am doing this to avoid personal biases and assumptions that may lead me to present the information in a hard-to-understand way since I have prior knowledge of Bulgarian history and to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/what-are-ux-personas\/#what-are-personas-used-for-in-ux\">ensure that all design decisions are centered around the user<\/a> (Bruton, 2022).&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Empathy Mapping<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Additionally, I will be using <a href=\"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/empathy-mapping.pdf\">empathy maps<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/literature\/article\/empathy-map-why-and-how-to-use-it#what_are_the_benefits_of_empathy_maps?-4\">to deeply understand what a user might need for a satisfactory experience<\/a> and possibly help identify new ways or ideas that would further enhance the design and usability of my website (Dam and Siang, 2024). These two techniques have been used by many professionals in the web industry but also the events industry where my background is. I am certain that they are going to have a positive impact on the work I produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div data-wp-interactive=\"core\/file\" class=\"wp-block-file\"><object data-wp-bind--hidden=\"!state.hasPdfPreview\" hidden class=\"wp-block-file__embed\" data=\"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/empathy-mapping.pdf\" type=\"application\/pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:300px\" aria-label=\"Embed of empathy-mapping.\"><\/object><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-ce32d8aa-9a62-4e8c-b92d-f0710349a808\" href=\"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/empathy-mapping.pdf\">empathy-mapping<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/empathy-mapping.pdf\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-ce32d8aa-9a62-4e8c-b92d-f0710349a808\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">Research Objectives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"has-inter-font-family\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Identify two types of competitors.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>People who provide information about Bulgarian embroidery to foreigners.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Trusted people who teach embroidery online.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-inter-font-family\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Identify preferred ways of learning and content consumption of users.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-inter-font-family\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Find inspiration for creating engaging and interactive educational content.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">User Experience Design<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Tutorial Design<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">My main goal for this website is to design it in an interesting, useful, and easy way for people to learn and navigate. As I will be targeting people with little knowledge in this area, the information provided would need to be easy to consume and understand, and the embroidery tutorials would need to be clear and straightforward to learn from them and practice. I will be learning more about embroidery myself, so this will be a good opportunity for me to produce content that is beginner-friendly from a beginner\u2019s perspective.&nbsp; From the previous research I did, there are YouTube videos already available, however they are mostly in Bulgarian. In this case, there are two options for visualising the tutorial explanations. The first would be me creating the content from scratch either in a video or illustration format, which will require additional time. The second is to use the available videos, credit the creators and simply translate what they are saying in the videos. However, the second option takes away from the idea of creating something unique, where I share my knowledge and experience regarding embroidery itself. I would need to further evaluate the time necessary for producing the content and decide which option to choose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Terminology Design<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Considering the target audience and the fact that there would be many unfamiliar words, the website should provide a seamless user journey, helping consumers navigate and find information easily. To avoid possible confusion, a good solution would be to implement some type of legend to explain words and terminology that is being used. Additionally, I would use more illustrations, graphics and\/or icons to help with visualising the meaning of navigation options, tutorial options and the articles about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Content Sections<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Additionally, I want to have two separate sections on my website. One will be embroidery tutorials with an overview of the ornaments covered in each tutorial. The other will be a learning section going into more detail about the history of Bulgarian embroidery, the symbolism of design, colour choices and positioning on the clothing, gender specific ornament meanings and more. For the learning section, apart from having text descriptions, I plan on introducing more visuals and constantly alternating between text and visuals or illustrations. This will further help users understand what is being said since this is a project focusing on something that needs to be seen to best comprehend and appreciate. Even though there will be two sections of the website I plan on regularly including links between both, for easy navigation and access. This could be done by having a small text block in a tutorial with an overview of the meaning of an element or wording that is being used, that when hovered over specific words appears either on the side or over the text and has a direct link to a full page with detailed explanation. Similarly in the learning section, when discussing an ornament there can be links that when hovered over prompt the user to see the tutorial on how to embroider said ornament or image links on the side of the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>User-Centered Design (UCD)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">In our workshops on User Experience Research and Design, we learned about User-Centered Design (UCD), the Double Diamond, and how we can implement them at different stages of a design process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Primary Research<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">For now, I plan to conduct small research with friends and family to find out what they might expect from a website like mine and what type of content would be useful to them when learning a new skill, such as embroidery. During this research, I would start by asking open-ended questions that explore their preferences and habits when visiting websites similar to the one I plan on making. Then, if necessary, I will follow up with questions wherever I need more clarification. Later on, during the prototype process I plan on <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/photos\/bulgarian-folk-costume-tradition-4017174\/\">carrying out ongoing tests of the website and gathering feedback based on their experience<\/a> to identify areas for improvement (Interaction Design Foundation, 2016). This will help me evaluate to what extent I have understood their initial needs and expectations, if I have accurately designed the website to be user-centered and user-friendly and also raise any unexpected issues or confusion that I had not accounted for in the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Secondary Research<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Currently, I am not planning on carrying out wider primary research on user preferences. Instead, I plan on doing secondary research across online forums, community groups and social media accounts related to embroidery or educational content on Bulgarian clothing and culture, to analyse what types of content people are interacting with the most and how the information is presented. From this analysis, I am hoping to gain understanding of and generate ideas on how to design and present my website so that it appeals to users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">Competitor Analysis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">For the competitor analysis, I searched for both English and Bulgarian websites on Bulgarian embroidery and embroidery guides for beginners. The results were quite similar in terms of design and presentation \u2013 in the form of blog\/news posts. The results on English websites about Bulgarian embroidery and traditional clothing were almost identical in terms of the information presented there. As most were parts of multi-purpose websites, the information is condensed into one or two posts, covering the most widely spread information and not going into much detail. This puts my idea for the website at an advantage, with not many competitors. However, the question of whether or not there would be much interest also arises, but I hope that by doing this project I can also increase the interest in Bulgarian culture and traditions overall. These results also provide me with more creative freedom as there is no competition with other websites specifically dedicated to Bulgarian embroidery, which would hopefully aid in differentiation and standing out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">&#8220;HMW&#8221; Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">During our UX Design workshop, we also learned about creating \u201cHow might we\u2026?\u201d statements, that summarise and help keep focus on the main issue we are designing for. As the Major Project is individual, I reframed the statement to \u201cHow might I\u2026?\u201d but the meaning remains the same. I came up with the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.6\"><em>\u201cHow might I educate people about Bulgarian clothing and traditional embroidery in an engaging, interesting and interactive way, so that people want to visit the website again, stay longer and learn more?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">The statement might change over the following months as I conduct more research and analysis and receive further feedback from tutors during Crit presentations, but my main focus for this Major Project will remain on making an interesting and educational website about my cultural background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">User Decision Making<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">To further improve my project I looked into <a href=\"https:\/\/research-methodology.net\/consumer-decision-making-process-a-detailed-analysis\/\">consumer decision-making processes presented by John Dudovskiy<\/a> (2022). Even though his article focuses on a model for consumer motivations to purchase, many of the findings can be applied to the decision users make about whether or not to stay longer or revisit a website. For example, the Problem\/Need Recognition, in the case of my target audience, would apply to the user\u2019s need to learn about Bulgarian embroidery. The Information Search stage would look very similar among my target audience as they would likely first look at what search results they get and what is available across different websites before going into the Evaluation of Alternatives stage and deciding which website would best meet their needs criteria. As there are few competitors and they have similarities to each other, I expect that creating and designing a more illustrative and themed website would greatly differentiate me. Further, having a website specifically dedicated to Bulgarian embroidery and clothing will stand out and be more memorable to people as a one-stop for everything related to it, rather than a broad news or blog website covering different topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">I expect the last two stages to differentiate the most. Instead of the Purchase Decision, the user would decide whether to stay longer and explore the website or leave. This is where my design choices would play a significant role in catching the user\u2019s attention and intriguing them to explore further. I plan to structure the layout in a more unconventional way that would still be easy to navigate while creating a rich feeling and making the user curious about what else they can find. The Post-Purchase Decision would represent a post-experience evaluation of the website, the information provided, and the way it is presented. The overall experience of using my website would need to be clear of confusion in terms of navigation and the information described, in order to provide a good customer experience. It is not only important for ensuring repetitive visits but also for encouraging positive word of mouth, leading to increased popularity of my website.&nbsp; Dudovskiy further suggests that decision-making for users can often be time-consuming and difficult when trying to find the most satisfactory product or service. Therefore, I strive for the design of my website to be reliable, to catch attention, and directly communicate to the visitor that it is the best place to get that type of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\">References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\">Bruton, L. (2022).&nbsp;<em>What are UX personas and what are they used for? &#8211; UX Design Institute<\/em>. [Online] Available at: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/what-are-ux-personas\/#what-are-personas-used-for-in-ux\">https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/what-are-ux-personas\/#what-are-personas-used-for-in-ux<\/a> [Accessed: 09\/01\/2025].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\">Dam, R.F. and Siang, T.Y. (2024).&nbsp;<em>Empathy Map \u2013 Why and How to Use It<\/em>. [Online] Available at: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/literature\/article\/empathy-map-why-and-how-to-use-it#what_are_the_benefits_of_empathy_maps?-4\">https:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/literature\/article\/empathy-map-why-and-how-to-use-it#what_are_the_benefits_of_empathy_maps?-4<\/a> [Accessed: 09\/01\/2025].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\">Dudovskiy, J. (2022).&nbsp;<em>Consumer Decision Making Process: a detailed analysis<\/em>. [Online] Available at: <a href=\"https:\/\/research-methodology.net\/consumer-decision-making-process-a-detailed-analysis\/#google_vignette\">https:\/\/research-methodology.net\/consumer-decision-making-process-a-detailed-analysis\/#google_vignette<\/a> [Accessed: 09\/01\/2025].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Interaction Design Foundation. (2016).\u00a0<em>What is User Centered Design?<\/em>\u00a0 [Online] Available at: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/literature\/topics\/user-centered-design\">https:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/literature\/topics\/user-centered-design<\/a> [Accessed:09\/01\/2025].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\">\u200cJacobs, A. (2016).&nbsp;<em>UX: Creating Proto-Personas<\/em>. [Online] Available at: <a href=\"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/ux-creating-proto-personas-76a1738401a2\">https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/ux-creating-proto-personas-76a1738401a2<\/a> [Accessed: 09\/01\/2025].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-inter-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"line-height:1.7\">Image source: <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/axer1m-9295702\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=4017174\">K47<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=4017174\">Pixabay<\/a> [Online] Available at: <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/photos\/bulgarian-folk-costume-tradition-4017174\/\">https:\/\/pixabay.com\/photos\/bulgarian-folk-costume-tradition-4017174\/<\/a> [Accessed: 09\/01\/2025].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Major Project website is going to be for non-Bulgarian people who want to learn more about Bulgarian embroidery and its meaning, and also learn how to embroider themselves. For my Major Project, I decided to create an educational website about traditional Bulgarian clothing embroidery. The website is going to be for non-Bulgarian people who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"templates\/template-full-width.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,23,20],"tags":[22,21,7],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-major-project","category-ux-design","tag-bulgarian-embroidery","tag-major-project-concept","tag-website-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-designs-by-niya.uk\/journalpublications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}