Helping You Choose Paint Colors for the Spaces You Love
OVERVIEW
Final design
In 2020, the idea first came to me when we bought our first house that we decided to renovate with our own hands. I designed the mobile concept Decorette, an digital tool that translates color as seen through a camera into color formulas suitable for interior design.
Read about the process below
CHALLENGE
User challenge
As an interior decorator and DIY enthusiast, I'm familiar with the challenges newcomers face when beginning interior design & hand painting projects. Even seasoned designers find color theory daunting.
There's a lack of resources for beginners looking to experiment with colors and textures in their homes. Online mood boards often lack accuracy, with colors not translating well into real life.
Decorette seeks to address this gap by providing a handheld tool that users can use to compare colors with and directly source the materials for the spaces they love.
Constraints
This was a COVID project with limited time for user research and testing. While it deviates from best practices, I included it in my portfolio because I enjoyed exploring the problems and solutions.
RESEARCH
Through a combination of hands-on experience with builders, and interviews with former interior design students, I gained valuable insights into the challenges faced by designers when selecting colors for room designs. Additionally, I conducted a competitive analysis of applications like Adobe Capture and RealHex, which provided further inspiration and guidance for Decorette development.
Process insights
Experienced designers excel in breaking down the color and selection process, leveraging trends effectively.
Beginners often feel overwhelmed and lack clarity on how to choose colors and visualize them realistically in their own spaces.
Competitive Insights
Adobe Capture offers intuitive features like the color wheel and automatic color palette detection, but some users find technical aspects like LAB and HSB labels confusing.
RealHex has limited functionality, primarily serving to obtain HEX codes, which is insufficient for someone looking to compare and contrast paint colors.
User journey
A user's journey as they go through using the app
DESIGN
Conceptualization
I started Decorette by making several paper prototypes and planning out how users would navigate the main features. This helped me quickly come up with ideas and test them to see what worked best. Once I found one with the most potential, I created low-mid fidelity concepts for future user testing.
Early sketches of Decorette on paper
UX flow with wireframes to map out the primary uses for the app
Prototyping
Once the concept is in place, I produced the following screens that address the user's primary use case of Decorette: To easily explore colors and materials for the spaces they love.
Screens curated for Decorette
A condensed user flow of how a user starts with their camera, then manually /auto selects colors, saves a theme, then explores colors and purchases options
TAKEAWAYS
Next steps
If I were to continue working on Decorette, I would prioritize answering these areas:
How should we account and adjust for the color differences between a camera compared to the real-life colors?
Good Interior design involves elements beyond color. It needs various textures too. How can we incorporate selections of different materials/textures into a theme?
Is it a good idea to create a sense of community among users using the app?
Final thoughts
Decorette was the first project that I've ever started. Throughout making this project, I learned how to take an inspiration I had while renovating my house, and turning it into an app with tangible and interactive elements. It has allowed me to sharpen my visual skills, critical thinking skills, and allowed me to combine the two things I love – problem solving + design!
