The Arcana Experience
Whether it’s to pass the time, to learn more about themselves, or to provide guidance during times of stress and uncertainty, horoscopes have become an essential part of millions of people’s lives. Arcana’s goal is to help those who seek answers from the stars.
Focus on what’s most important
The first iteration of Arcana focused on getting the website’s core features that our users love. After going through analytics, we pick content that resonates with our audience and re-imagine them in a mobile environment.
I’ve also done a competitive analysis and user journey mapping to highlight their motivations and pain points. Throughout the project, I work with the team closely to brainstorm new ideas, solve issues, and align our knowledge and insights.
Start your day with helpful advice
Knowing that our users typically consume our horoscopes during their commute to work, content is kept short to accommodate the time constraint. Being able to access different time periods allows them to plan ahead not just for the day, but for other days as well.
Know when mercury is in retrograde
Mercury retrograde is a major event among people who believe in astrology. A typical comment that we see is that our users want to be able to know when it happens and how it affects their sign so they can prepare.
I created a mercury retrograde countdown to keep our users informed when it happens. You can also find quick answers to FAQs and tips on how to survive it.
Learning beyond horoscopes
Similar to personality type indicators, horoscopes appeal to people that want to learn more about themselves. My goal is to present this educational content in fun and interactive ways to keep them engaged.
Get deeper, more personalized content
Providing shorter content allows us to promote longer, more personalized paid content. We call these premium readings. These readings are multi-page documents that cover more specific topics than the free content.
Our business goal is to get people to purchase premium readings through the store.
I explore different ways to help people discover our premium readings without disrupting the main experience.
Simplifying the purchase flow
To get a premium reading, several pieces of information are needed before being able to purchase it. We need to ask for a birth date, time, and place, and due to limitations from the legacy code—their gender.
Step 1
Use onboarding to capture information
During onboarding, we ask for the birth date since it’s needed to know their sign and personalize their daily horoscope.
Step 2
Pre-populate the form with known information
We prepopulate the fields with known information and the default birth time used by astrologers. The majority of people likely don’t know their time of birth so using a default time reduces the steps to complete the form. For the birthplace, we incorporate auto-complete during location search.
For gender, the business has decided not to prioritize this issue for the first launch but will fix it in phase two.
Step 3
Save information for faster checkout on their next purchase
Information is stored in the app to simplify the future experience.
Project handover
As a freelance designer, my role was limited to working on the foundations of the app. Since I had to turn over the project to the in-house team, I made sure to document the decisions we made during the process as well as the behaviors and flows. I also presented a demo of the prototype and lightly talked about my recommendations after launch and ideas for phase 2.
A prototype of the app can be found here.
