My capstone. Three weeks, three user types, and one big assumption I had to throw out early.
Role-based navigation, a real sign-up flow, and an explore-first experience. It took two rounds of testing and a few wrong turns to get here.
Navigation was the main problem — fix the menu, fix the site. I was wrong. Users didn't know if the platform was even active. Trust came first. Navigation came second.
When I first looked at BollyStep, I assumed it was a nav problem — too many links, no clear hierarchy. But when I actually sat with users, something different came up: they didn't trust the platform was even real. That reframed everything.
Users expected instant account creation but got redirected to a contact form — with no clear path forward.
No clear hierarchy — users couldn't find where to go or understand what the platform offered them.
Dancers, Organizers, and Choreographers shared one confusing experience with zero differentiation.
Hidden costs and no content previews killed trust before users even reached sign-up.
My first instinct was to fix the navigation. But every interview kept coming back to trust: "How do I know this is legit? Why can't I just sign up?" The broken sign-up wasn't a bug — it was the loudest signal of a platform that didn't feel real.
HMW communicate what Bollystep is + who it's for within seconds?
HMW simplify user flow to reduce stress and make planning enjoyable?
HMW present purpose + offerings clearly for first-time users?
HMW design homepage for both new clients and returning users?
The goal wasn't just to fix navigation — it was to make sure that within seconds of landing, each type of user could see themselves in the product and take one clear next step.
Receive invite + code → access tutorials, practice at your pace, and perform confidently on event day.
Manage group dances, invite participants, track progress — all in one streamlined dashboard.
Apply, upload routines, and build a professional profile — with a dedicated onboarding pathway.
I ran interviews, a heuristic evaluation, and a content audit — thinking I'd confirm the nav problems I'd already spotted. Instead, they kept pointing at something deeper: the platform didn't feel trustworthy enough to even try.
Spoke with 6 people across all three roles. I went in thinking I'd hear about navigation. I mostly heard about trust — and that shift surprised me.
6participants across organizers, dancers & choreographers
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Evaluated against Nielsen's 10 heuristics. The score was low — but the more useful outcome was that it gave me a defensible list of problems to bring into research, not just opinions.
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Reviewed every landing and client-facing page. Dense copy, unclear hierarchy — and nothing that answered the first question most users had: "Is this actually for me?"
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Sanjana is planning her wedding in 3 months. She needs 12 family members — spread across 4 cities and 3 time zones — to learn a coordinated Bollywood routine. She has no dance background, no budget to hire someone in person, and is managing everything through WhatsApp voice notes. She found BollyStep through a friend. When she landed on the site, she couldn't tell if it was even still active.
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Users clicked "Join Now" expecting an account. They got a form asking for event details. Most just left.
One nav bar, three completely different users. Nobody could find what was relevant to them — not because the menu was long, but because it wasn't built for anyone specific.
A dancer and a choreographer have nothing in common — but the platform treated them identically. Neither felt like the product was meant for them.
This was the one I underestimated going in. Hiding pricing didn't create intrigue — it made people assume the worst and leave before they'd seen anything.
Managing a group dance across time zones and skill levels via WhatsApp is genuinely hard. BollyStep could have solved that. It just never surfaced that it could.
Each finding pushed me toward a specific design choice. Here's the thread.
| Insight | Design Decision | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Confusing sign-up → contact form | Instant sign-up / log in directly from homepage | Removed #1 drop-off point |
| Unclear user roles | Role-based nav: Organizer · Dancer · Choreographer | Faster orientation for all users |
| Overwhelming content | Simplified IA, cleaner hierarchy, clear CTAs | Reduced cognitive load |
| Low trust — no pricing | Pricing transparency + social proof in funnel | Higher sign-up intent |
| No content preview | "Explore before commit" — browse dances first | Trust built before sign-up |
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Mapped decision points across all three roles to find exactly where users were dropping. Seeing the whole flow laid out made it obvious how many dead ends the existing site had baked in.
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I sketched before I opened Figma. Some ideas were bad — which is exactly the point. Getting them out of my head and onto paper made it easier to see what was worth pursuing and what wasn't.
I learned this the hard way on an earlier project — going high-fidelity too soon means users give feedback on the visuals, not the flow. Mid-fi kept the conversation focused on what mattered.
The biggest request from dancer interviews was simple: let me see what I'm getting before I commit. So I made browsing the default — no sign-up wall, no contact form. Preview, then decide.
Organizers like Sanjana were running group dances through WhatsApp voice notes. The dashboard gives them one place to invite, assign, and track — so they stop chasing people across five different apps.
Choreographers had no path at all in the old site — just a contact form everyone else used too. This gives them their own application flow and a profile that shows their work. It's a small thing that signals: you belong here.
Sign-up, dashboard, and core task flows — one for each role.
View Full Prototype ↗Users clicked "Join Now" and hit a contact form asking for their event details. It felt like submitting a request, not signing up. Most didn't get past this.
Email and password. Done. No NDA, no contact form, no guessing whether someone would email you back.
"About", "Pricing", "Join Now" — fine for a generic site, but none of it tells a dancer or a choreographer that this place is for them. Everyone I spoke to felt like a visitor, not a user.
Organizers · Dancers · Choreographers. Three words that answer the question "is this for me?" before anyone has to scroll.
Round 1 was on the existing site — I needed to see how bad it actually was with real users before I could argue for changes. Round 2 was on my mid-fi prototype. The improvement was bigger than I expected, which made me trust the research more.
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Tracked impact across usability, adoption, and satisfaction using the HEART framework — useful for making the outcomes legible beyond just "it felt better".
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Recommendations for what comes after — what I'd prioritise in a next sprint, and what I'd need to learn more about before designing it.
4m 12s → 1m 26s for core task
0% → 100% in Round 2
Up from 52 — "OK" to "Excellent"
Largest single-sprint gain in the cohort
I wanted the design to feel warm and South Asian without leaning on clichés. The palette came from research into the emotional tone users associated with weddings and celebration — not from picking colours that "looked Indian".
This was new for me — I'd never documented a component library before this project. It took longer than I expected, but by the end I understood why it matters: every decision is written down, so future changes are conversations, not guesswork.
I went in thinking about navigation structure. The biggest unlock was stepping back and asking: who is actually here, and what do they need in the first 30 seconds? Everything else flowed from answering that first.
I kept thinking the trust issues were about wording. They weren't. Pricing hidden three clicks deep doesn't become trustworthy with better language. It needs to be in the right place — which is an IA decision, not a writing one.
It forced me to make calls I wasn't confident about and move anyway. That was uncomfortable. But heuristic evaluation gave me something concrete to point at when I had to justify a decision — which helped a lot when I wasn't sure of my own instincts yet.
They came in through a forwarded link from the organizer. I'd spent most of my time designing the homepage. This was a useful reminder that the front door isn't always where people actually enter — and I should have mapped that earlier.
South Asian weddings carry a lot of emotion — performance anxiety, family pressure, wanting to do something meaningful together. I solved the functional problems. The emotional ones — the delight moments, the sense of occasion — I left on the table. That's what I'd focus on next.
I'd design a rehearsal mode where the group can practice together in real time — even across time zones. That's the thing Sanjana actually needed, and a static video library only gets you halfway there. That's where the real coordination problem lives.
The Figma prototype covers sign-up, the dashboard, and the core task flows for all three roles. It's the clearest way to see the decisions in context.
Wedding Organizer · South Asian Professional
Sanjana is a 28-year-old wedding organizer planning her wedding in 3 months. She needs 12 family members spread across 4 cities and 3 time zones to learn a coordinated Bollywood dance routine. She has no professional dance training background but is highly organized and uses WhatsApp as her primary communication medium.
