Sept - Dec 2020
(Semester Long)
Group project
Researcher
Product Designer
Figma
Zoom
As the main UX designer, I shared responsiblity with 2 of my teammates during the research phase and
In particular, today people access information from a lot of different sources (web articles, social media platforms), in different formats (ie: images, quotes, videos), and different mediums (mobile phone, desktop, tablet, kindle). While the different sources support their saving and collecting features, there is not an easy way to collect and manage all of this information in one place.
Spark, an mobile application designed to maximize their ability to save, organize, and retrieve inspirations users come across on a daily basis.
For our first version, we will be focusing primarily on designers who relying on surrounding information to learn and grow.
Spark, an mobile application designed to maximize their ability to save, organize, and retrieve inspirations users come across on a daily basis.
It is a platform that helps people, primarily designers build their personal knowledge repository gathered from various platforms and mediums to get inspired by efficiently manage and refer back to what they have saved and valued.
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The following research process aimed to understand how designers currently find and organize information and uncover their pain points and needs surrounding these processes.
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6 competitors
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56 Responses
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4 Participants
We looked through 6 competitors in the market and got following insights:
The competitors who need lower learning efforts from users tend to provide lower value to them and vice versa. For example, Figma and Evernote provide features that users would be able to save content in different formats; however, they also need users to research and learn before using it.
Taking inspiration from social media functionalities to Leverage or improve upon its organization functionalities (such as tagging or hashtagging).
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We sent out a short survey included both multiple-choice questions and open-ended questions asking about different tools and devices users currently use to save and manage inspirational content, as well as any frustrations they encounter.
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82.8% of respondents are looking for inspiration using cellphones and they often use the same device to save and manage their inspirations.
91.2% of respondents mentioned that they are having trouble refer back to the content they saved very often.
During the interviews, we asked participants to describe their most recent experiences of using their current tools, what they felt was the difference between the goal-oriented search vs. randomly curated thoughts, and what frustrations (if any) they encountered using any information curation tools.
There is a need for the product because no solution exists without needing users to learn and adapt.
“I have not found a tool that keep everything together without effort of either searching/researching a tool or learning more about how the tool works.”
User reluctant to housekeeping their saved content because the process is manual and tedious
“It's unorganized and I forget about where I keep things or there are too many things in there.”
Users’ often come across content that they prefer to look at later, rather than right away
“ if the website doesn't have a "save" feature (like a cool personal/portfolio website) i'll just bookmark the page and hope that I remember to check it out later.”
Saved content hardly ends up being used. Users would benefit from a reminder of the content they have saved.
“Tend to not go back to sources because I get exposed to new ones very soon. The saved content just sit there and don’t end up being used”
I decided to use the "5 why Technique" to discover the underlying issues of the problems. Then I framed the following design opportunities:
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How might we
improve the usability of the saved content to help users use their saved content more effectively?
How might we
design the experience to be low effort and high value to our users?
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Personal information curation apps, including Evernotes and Pocket, have limited organizational and viewing features while supporting content collection from a variety of sources. However, social media and collaborative software such as Slack have innovated in this space of information organization and viewing with features such as hashtags, threads, rich annotations, etc.
Content curation has always been a competitive topic. From the market research above, I discovered that many existing tools support the content collection, but few provide good management and organization options. Therefore, I suggested the team focusing on information management to make personal information curation a more fulfilling experience.
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After conducting 4 interviews and 56 surveys, we analyzed the results of our formative research using affinity mapping, and got the following key results which confirmed our previous hypothesis, and also moved us further.
44/58 participants were unsatisfied with the existing solutions in collecting and retrieving contents. Multiple interviewees also mentioned they are hoping to find an easy way to collect content in one place. But there isn't a tool like that exists without effort to learn about how the tool works.
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82.8% of users are looking for inspiration using cellphones and they often use the same device to save and manage their inspirations.
Therefore, We decided to create a mobile app to start with, then gradually consider designing the web extensions as our next step.
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Participants mentioned, they usually curated thoughts and resources randomly. Therefore, when it comes to a goal-oriented search, they often forget when and what content they have collected.
I discovered following key insights:
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I defined the our target users by creating following personas:
Tina enjoys discovering inspirations from online sources, but she often reluctant to organize them. She could remember why she saved it at all when she came across the resources again. So she needs a better way to collect the content and includes why she kept it quickly and easily.
Billy lives a very organized life, and he refers back to what he saved often. However, it has been hard for him to refer back to multiple apps that he previously held content in. So he needs to find a unified way to save the content and an easier way to retrieve the content he kept.
I decided to use the "5 why Technique" to discover the underlying issues of the problems. Then I framed the following design opportunities:
Personal information curation apps, including Evernotes and Pocket, have limited organizational and viewing features while supporting content collection from a variety of sources. However, social media and collaborative software such as Slack have innovated in this space of information organization and viewing with features such as hashtags, threads, rich annotations, etc.
Content curation has always been a competitive topic. From the market research above, I discovered that many existing tools support the content collection, but few provide good management and organization options. Therefore, I suggested the team focusing on information management to make personal information curation a more fulfilling experience.
After conducting 4 interviews and 56 surveys, we analyzed the results of our formative research using affinity mapping, and got the following key results which confirmed our previous hypothesis, and also moved us further.
44/58 participants were unsatisfied with the existing solutions in collecting and retrieving contents. Multiple interviewees also mentioned they are hoping to find an easy way to collect content in one place. But there isn't a tool like that exists without effort to learn about how the tool works.
82.8% of users are looking for inspiration using cellphones and they often use the same device to save and manage their inspirations.
Therefore, We decided to create a mobile app to start with, then gradually consider designing the web extensions as our next step.
Participants mentioned, they usually curated thoughts and resources randomly. Therefore, when it comes to a goal-oriented search, they often forget when and what content they have collected.
Based on the design opportunities are discovered, I brainstormed and came up with the following ideas to improve the current content curation experience.
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To get a better understanding of the structure of the design, I created the information architecture according to the ideas I had generated.
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I created 2 user flows to further exam the effectiveness of my conventions
We finished the low-Fidelity and mid-Fidelity Prototype separately with assigned interactions, Then Joanna and I conducted four usability tests with fellow MSI students concentrating in HCI during the iteration phase. After analyzing the feedback, I made the following changes:
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Spark will recommend labels and auto-generate prefilled remarks base on the content and help users save them with only a few clicks.
Users could rely on Spark's highlighter feature to mark sentences they want to keep in mind for later usage. Spark will prase the marked sentences for a better search experience as well.
Spark uses folders and labels to help users better organize their saved content. They could rely on label filters to roughly target content with ease.
Spark helps users retrieve saved content with low effort. It recommends labels to users based on their recent search history and saved content. Users also able to search by folders to achieve a more accurate result.
Sparks helps users recall their boxed long-term memory by resurfacing saved content. Based on user's recent searches, Spark could discover useful saved content that users have long forgotten.
The failure of a project/product is never causeless.
Don’t be afraid to speak up when it matters
During the project, I didn’t speak up enough to my team about my concerns because I felt I might be overreacted. I ended up didn’t satisfy with the outcome.
Setbacks are the necessary step for success.
Instead of frustrating during the winter break, I reiterated the whole process and came up the design I presented today. The joy of the accomplishment taught me that I should never give up working and trying.
Our team didn't plan the project, assign the PM, and recalibrate after each design phase.
We didn't give each other enough feedback during the design phase, partially because of the remote environment, also because we didn't set the success metric at the font.
In future iterations, we hope to dig deeper into the rediscover feature and hopefully could find out better ways to maximize the reusability of the contents to bring the inspiration management more efficiently. We are also planning to take the auto delete into account to help users better housekeeping their unwanted contents in a smart and low effort way. Moreover, we are considering adding multiple co-authors into one folder if the future research insights are aligned with.