Project Brief: It was a choice to take up any topic to practice and understand the principles of task analysis.

Process:

Why haircut of all?

Unexplored, cool, hip, different and interesting, personally didn't have a good haircut for a long time, availability of sample users in NID, etc.

•  Why a web-site?

Actually thought of something tangible to sport a haircut but ended up with a web site. It became a pretext for adding extensive information as in all about haircuts. Also, to run an interactive application on it. It was cheap method to reach a wide variety of audience.

Initial Research:

Constituted understanding the hair management of boys and girls with different length and texture of hair, frequency of getting a haircut, different attitudes towards experimenting, etc.

A few Findings:

•  Girls have longer hair than guys that is why they have to take care of their hair more laboriously.

•  Girls have many parameters before they get a haircut done like face type, texture of the hair, type of occasion, convenience, experimentation, dandruff problem, budget etc.

•  Guys get a haircut more frequently and generally more willingly experiment than gals due to shorter length of hair, more convenience to manage, cheaper parlors.

•  A lot of factors motivate people to get haircuts like to sport a new look every season, getting bored, fashion idols, trend setters and followers, Hollywood kicks, etc. Basically, people want to have fun at this age.

•  They however are not very experimental with parlors. Once they find a satisfactory place they don't want to change easily. That's because the parlor guy understands the needs of his clientele after a period of time and they get used to each other.

Why does the user want to have a haircut, how does she/he want to have the haircut, which parlor does he select, what motivates the user, etc.

Analysis:

User tasks were finalized and task analysis was conducted.

Information Architecture:

There were many sections to the prototype- select a haircut where an interactive application let the user know suitable haircut, flashback on haircut talked about famous haircuts over the past half a century, latest section of hair trends, quick fixes for people who have no time for a haircut, medical remedies to hair problems, latest tools used and hygiene talk, discussion board.

Testing:

Users came and used the site and found the interactive section very useful along with flashback on haircuts.