This is a concept design challenge provided by Bitesize UX as a part of my UX/UI Design course at Springboard. It's a simulation of the real world project where I received all required materials about the company such as goals, challenges, research results, Personas etc.
My role was to run a solo design sprint using client materials I've been provided with through all Design Sprint stages, including define, ideate, sketch, prototype and test.
GramCity is a photo editing mobile app that helps users to easily make their photos look awesome before sharing them on Instagram or other social media networks.
GramCity wants to explore how they can help their users find the most Instagram-able locations to take a photo near them or in a certain place/city.
Researching for the best photo locations when planning a trip can be time-consuming.
Exploring great photo-ops near you while enjoying the trip may be challenging.
Sometimes, the picture you’ve painted of your destination is not the same as what it’s like in reality, which may ruin the trip.
To plan the Design Sprint, I used a DIY guide, which suggests the following steps:
Understand the design challenge and map a solution.
A review of existing ideas and sketching of a solution.
Decide and weave winning screens into a storyboard.
Quick prototyping using 'fake it' philosophy.
Interview potential customers and learn by watching them react to the prototype.
Tell us about how you find new places to take a photo?
I’ve been provided with 2 key personas I need to focus on:
I needed to set a long-term goal for the design sprint to get started. After that, I defined possible reasons preventing us from meeting the goal and turned them into design questions for this sprint.
Once the end goal and the sprint questions were identified, I created a basic map for the project.
The map consists of steps that the user would need to take to achieve that goal. This simple map defines the direction for my ideas generation, which I will be doing tomorrow.
On Day 2, I conducted quick research and highlighted four different instruments people use to find good photography spots on the internet.
The problem is that none of them works well without the others. More details below.
Additionally, I found very helpful to study apps that help users discover other products or content in different places globally, e.g. booking websites.
I sketched eight different ideas in 8 minutes. Here is what I had:
The next step is to choose the best one. My choice was a sketch no.8 because it includes a map view, a list of places near you, filtered and sorted to your preferences. A user can also see the place’s rating and how many people have shared a photo taken there.
I needed to sketch a 3-panel board at the end of Day 2 consisting of the critical screen, plus one screen before and after the critical screen. I’ve decided that the browsing page for the photo spot search is the critical screen that will lead us to the goal. Thus, I started off sketching with this screen.
My goal for Day 3 was to create a detailed storyboard: a step-by-step plan that guides the prototype. I split my storyboard based on 4 different user flows.
To start the photo spot search the user needs to find the ‘explore’ page using bottom navigation.
The user starts the search by entering an address/city or choosing her current location. The user can jump to a map view if needed. When the user sees the search results, she can navigate there, add them to the trip planner or open a page to get more details.
The user can refine the search and sort it, save her filter preferences and set up notifications when a new place will be detected near her. It will help users not to miss out on a good photo op at any time.
When the user clicks on the map view, she sees the options available around her with a small photo near the spot. It will help the user select the places that are in the same direction.
The user can also check out the live view to know what to expect.
In her account, the user can see all photos she shared with the community and collections of places saved for the trip planned.
The user can click on one of the trip collections and see the trip plan. Once the user gets to the location on the list, she can check the visited site on her trip list. In this case, the user sees the success statement and the review form to share photos made at the location and rate her experience.
By clicking on the photo spot, the user sees its profile with detailed information about the place and all photos shared by the community.
The user can tap on any image and scroll the page down to see other photos. Additionally, the user can add pictures to her favorites to save her photo references.
For the quick prototyping exercise, I chose Figma because I have the highest exposure to it. I tried to find the right balance between creating the disposable prototype for the design sprint and making it look realistic. I've built 19 screens in one day. It looked very raw but as promised in Design Sprint, it was more than enough to test my ideas and learn.
To stitch my screens together, I chose the MarvelApp as one of the quickest tools for creating prototypes.
Number 5 is called the magic number for UX usability testing because the science tells us that returns diminish drastically once you add more than five users to a test group. At the same time, it’s crucial to pick the right participants who align with the users who would actually interact with my product and get the most out of the 5 test users in a research session.
Overall, results of this design sprint showed that this idea has great potential and helped identify a lot of opportunities for improvement.
For instance, it shouldn’t be misinterpreted as Instagram’s Highlights. Successful states on completion can add satisfaction for the user and the ability to share your travel plans with friends. Progress bar/completion % and the number of places left on the list can be handy as well.
Can the user upload the photo without linking it to any photo spot?
Do we want the user to share other content apart from photo spots she visited?
Can the user link any place on the photo spot or only those on her trip lists?
Consider an option to skip the review form, add a comment, and upload photos from your Instagram.
It should be clear to the user how and when to use it. Additionally, the feature might be introduced on the filter menu.
Consider an option to skip the review form, add a comment, and upload photos from your Instagram.
A design sprint is an excellent tool for the Lean UX and Lean startup methodologies.
By spending only five days on this product, you find the right direction, start asking the right questions, and what is more important, save a massive amount of time on creating unnecessary stuff. Quick prototyping helps you create a product that will most likely trigger a lot of criticism from your participants, which basically means that you will discover the great solutions much quicker.
