GramCity
Design Sprint
In this project, I tackled a modified “Google Design Sprint,” which is a rapid design technique used by many companies to quickly come up with, ideate, design, prototype and test ideas. The process allows for companies to come up with solutions more quickly and learn what works and what doesn’t without spending tons of time, research and resources.
For the “GramCity” design sprint, I was tasked with finding a solution for a new feature within a photo editing app that suggests places for people to take interesting photos.
Day 1: Understand/Map
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
Potential user flows for the new GramCity feature.
Different users like to travel and capture experiences in different ways. We were given two personas, which ultimately boil down to “the planner” (Sara) who likes to prepare before a trip and research and save locations to plan their trip around, and the “last minute grammer” (Nick) who doesn’t want to really plan anything or go out of their way to find a good spot to take a picture.
Before getting going, it’s clear to me there should be some categories set up to give suggestions, such as most popular, near me, and then possibly some categories of things for people to search out, such as art (murals, sculpture, etc.), architecture, and natural landscapes.
Mapping
Based on this info, I mapped out a few potential flows that could work for both personas. Ideally, a user would enter a city (or auto locate their current location), be presented with a list of options, and then they could focus a search by close, popular, and type of attraction.
After that, they should be able to explore the location, see if it works for them, and then either save the location or go there immediately.
I think the first one is most viable. The second one is, too, but can be a shorter path on the same route as the first map.
Day 2: Step 1-Lightning Demos
Lightning demos are quick assesments of apps/sites you want to draw inspiration from to see how other people handle similar tasks. I’ve selected Yelp, Singing Streets, and Roadtrippers as inspiration. Yelp is, of course, the go-to local suggestion app for most people. It’s actually been a while since I’ve used the actual app, so it was cool to see they’ve beefed up the suggestion features.
YELP
Yelp has many admirable qualities. The “collections” feature helped give me inspiration when organizing categories for GramCity. The search categories and results are basically what I am envisioning as a guideline.
Singing Streets
Singing Streets is the next one I checked out. This is a musical factoid app specifically for London that has tons of interesting locations for where historical musical things happened. You can do a “locations near me” or set up a tour based on your interests (ie, Jimi Hendrix or David Bowie-specific places.) It autoloads with the top locations to instantly showcase popular results.
I like the wishlist and “set up a tour” sections.
Roadtrippers
This is an app I’m not so familiar with, but has a great suggestion feature based on a particular route you are taking. This is kind of cool because it goes beyond your current location or destinations and finds places along a route. You can also pick “photo ops” which has a subcategory of “abandoned sites” and other kinds of photo ops. It may add too many steps, but it’s something to consider. Clicking items on a map brings up a google info card. Also a good feature!
Day 2: Step 2 - Crazy 8s
Crazy 8s is a fast ideation technique, where you quickly sketch 8 ideas, spending only 1 minute per idea. This process allows you to just “create” and get ideas out quickly without overthinking it.
I chose to attempt to sketch out a category selection page. I like second idea, although, after some thought, it needs to have a map where the location is up top.
So if it can have a map with pins and categories below that and results below that, I believe it can all be contained on one screen!
So if we have the before screen be location entering. Second page is a map with category buttons below it. When you click each category and a “near me” to satisfy the last minute explorer, it would work well! Then when you pick an item, the next page gives you info and example pics and if you want to go there now or save it.
Crazy 8s ideas.
Extrapolating the best idea from the crazy 8s sketches.
Day 3: Storyboard
The 3rd day is dedicated to storyboarding your ideas for the path you thought was the most viable from the Crazy 8s ideation session, I chose to follow a path where the user enters a location on the first screen or chooses current location.
Once a location is established, the user can then organize the list of attractions by:
Closest
Most popular
Art/architecture
History and nature.
After organizing the results, the user can explore the individual options, which will each have their own screen with a preview pic, short description, and a link to some examples of grams taken there. They can explore the grams to see if they are cool, and then either go there or add to a list. If they add to a list, they have to view the list and then go from there.
Day 4: Prototyping
And now the fun part!
Building the prototype went fairly smoothly. Sketching a storyboard absolutely helped organize my thoughts and have a logical work flow. I built my screens in Sketch, utilizing the bright pink and black color scheme of the logo we were provided with.
The most time-consuming part was gathering the assets to work with for each location. (It made me wish I had a team where we had a dedicated asset gatherer.)
After coming up with the basic screens, I felt it needed a couple supplementary screens to help fortify the vision slightly, so I added those in. While protoypes are supposed to be minimal, I always like to supplement a little bit to make it feel a little more like an actual application.
A sampling of some of the screens in my prototype.
Day 5: Validate
Testing...1,2, 1,2
Ah, the day of judgement! I was able to track down 5 participants to test out my prototype and walk through a couple of tasks to see if my prototype made sense or not. While many of them simply had a hard time with the limitations of the prototype itself, they did offer some unique insight. One subject just had a hard time navigating it in general, but I believe that was due to me not explaining the process as clearly as I should have.
“I wanted the ‘use my current location’ button to go directly to the results page, even though there was a giant ‘go’ button below it.”
“Couple of times the back button lost track of where I was and couldn’t get to the home screen.”
One user suggested that the home button should return to the search page and not the search results. An easy fix, if more users felt that way.
Another suggestions was that there should possibly be a way to filter results in addition to the categories. A worthwhile idea!
Almost all of the testers tried to click on just the text that says “explore more grams” and not the photos. It’s a simple tweak make that a hyperlink, but I figured people would go straight for the photos. That’s why testing is important, and can often prove that a designers instincts aren’t necessarily the best ideas.
Summary
After testing, it was pretty clear that I was on the right track with the solutions I came up with. There were some features I feel could be added, but could probably wait for a second round of revisions, such as filtering results. It would also be worthwhile to test the categories a little more to see what is really needed and what could wait. In looking back at the design brief, they implied that they would like users to add locations in the app, which I may have missed, but would add many more screens and expand this beyond an MVP-type project.
Thanks for reading!