Craftplan

Craftplan is a crossplatform application made to simplify the organization of your projects and let you enjoy the making process.

It’s composed of 3 core features:

• Project management;
• Inventory;
• Planning.

This app was made by cosplayers for cosplayers and all type of makers / manual workers. That’s part of why the thought process and UX research has been at the heart of the project (and still in progress).

Being a cosplayer, a prop maker or anyone creative can be challenging. Your mind tends to wander off, get excited by everything you see and experience, which makes it hard to focus solely on one task or project.

Some don't mind a messy process because they're either fast workers (making it easy to finish something before starting another) or at ease with working on several things at a time without getting too distracted or un-hyped. Others (like me, hence this project) need something to help them focusing, see the overall project, evaluate what's left to do and have a semi-clear objective as to when that project should see the light of day.

I organized my user research in the following way:

• Analyzing the competition (mainly Cosplanner)
• Quantitative user research (polls on Instagram & review gathering of Cosplanner)
• Quality remote usability testings with 5 participants (using Discord)
• Accessibility inputs from 2 participants (asked questions & going through the overall user journey)
• Informal focus group with 3 participants



The next ones will come when we'll have a working app prototype to show for.

There are already two existing apps to organize cosplay projects: Cosplanner & Cosflowy (abandoned)

Cosplanner has taken the market quite fast because there was a clear need with features targeted specifically for cosplayers, but the lack of updates is making it obsolete now.

Some of the criticism I read (and experienced):

• Not supported by new phones;

• No auto synchronization between mobile & desktop app;
• Manual data backup (from mobile to desktop app, one project at a time);

• Conflicts with mobile & desktop app;

• No local or account-based data backup;
• Monthly fee to import those backups;
• Mobile app glitching & crashing;

• Could benefit from a better organization system;

• Not accessible;

• Minor feature tweaks.