Eppik

Mobile app

Overview

As a final project with General Assembly, we were put into a group of three and assigned to a real client with a real problem to solve. This was the pinnacle of the course and the main reason why I chose this UX bootcamp. To say I was excited is an understatement.

We were to work with Eppik, a photo album digitisation company. Their mission: “to safeguard your family stories for generations to come.”

I would be working with Dana Chahine a wonderfully passionate UX newcomer, and Julia Schwarz who I sought a lot of advice from during the bootcamp for her previous experience as a visual designer. We made an epic team together!

Goal

Eppik came to us with the following issue: their user’s engagement with the web platform was falling off after the initial sign up. After having their photo albums digitised and seeing them on the platform, users stopped there. However the platform becomes more powerful for users if they add details to the photos.

Our overarching goal from Eppik was to increase long-term user engagement through the design of an iOS mobile app. They decided this could be done in two phases:

1. Data entry
2. Data utilisation

We had two weeks so we prioritised phase 1: how to get the users to add information to their photos. Eppik insisted that we used their branding and styles so this was a UX focussed project.

Below is a project canvas we drew up to visualise the scope of the project.

Design Process

We used an iterative approach with four phases, discover, define, develop, and deliver known as the double diamond process. The idea being to diverge and gather information and ideas, then converge to distil this into actionable insights to take to the next phase.

1. Discover — Competitor research, Survey, User interview, Usability testing existing site
2. Define — Affinity map,User Persona, Experience map, Problem statement, How might we’s
3. Develop— Design studio, Feature prioritisation, Hook model, Sitemap and card sort
4. Deliver— Wireframes and usability testing, Prototype

Discover

Competitor research

We took a look at some direct and indirect competitors to see what features they offered. We have some unusual competitors here, like WhatsApp, but we know it is a popular platform for sharing and engaging with photos.

There were some clear standout features that we decided were important like notifications, comments, tagging, reactions, and the ability to share, and forward content with social networks.

I wanted to get to the bottom of how popular products drove their users to engage, so I did some further analysis on the high engagement competitors.

I wanted to understand some of the biggest and most engaged with products to see how they keep users coming back and I found a few common threads.

• They are all very easy to use, accessibility being a key to their success
• They all have very strong mobile apps for use on the go
• They all promote identification so that users know who they are engaging with, which allows for a network effect.
• And lastly, they all make use of push notifications to bring users back onto their platform.

User survey

We sent a survey to our network as well as Eppik’s to identify the ideal users to interview further. We had 115 responses which resulted in a rich interview pool as well as some helpful information.

In the graphs below you can see some of the key insights we gathered before the interviews.

Main motivations by far, is to keep and re-live memories. The top responses all centred on this idea of participating in each other’s lives.

User interview

We then interviewed 4 Eppik users and 5 non-eppik users about their experience with photos, photo albums, what they did with them, and why. We then put the feedback on sticky notes and used a process called affinity mapping to expose patterns and trends in our research.

Usability testing existing site

With the 4 eppik users we did an initial usability test on the website to see if we could learn something to take to mobile and we affinity mapped that feedback as well.

We learnt that users loved how good the image quality is, and relished in reliving memories and discovering old photographs

We also learnt that we needed to address

• how sharing is done
• how users interact with the platform
• how users add information to their photos

Define

Affinity map

Below is the master affinity map where we began grouping feedback and insights.

We further distilled the findings into a much more digestible data set that we could use which you can see here:

• We found that the motivators for keeping and sharing photos and albums is to: preserve memories, connect with others, and share those lovely feelings like comfort, joy, and love.
• Users mostly share with their phones over WhatsApp, and people want either acknowledgement or reciprocation for sharing their photos.
• Users mainly responded to notifications, but the memories feature, and just seeing the photo often brought them back into these memories.
• Users particularly battled with finding their photos and then the fact that they were spread over not just a few apps but also across devices, and sometimes hidden in a box under the stairs

User persona

A user persona is a useful tool to help designers develop products for the users that will actually be using them, with more empathy we can make better decisions to serve their needs and not what we think is best.

Meet Karen, the user we developed based on our research:

Experience map

It’s clear from the emotional journey that Karen’s greatest frustration is around easily adding data to the digitised version of the physical photo. So, the problem that we need to solve for Karen is…

Problem statement

Karen needs a way to easily add structure and information to her photos so she can search, access and share them with her friends and family.

How might we

To help spark ideas, we created what is called “how might we” statements, which is a UX tool to help designers frame the question in different ways to expose more possible solutions. The different How might we’s we decided on were:

1. How might we prompt Karen to add information to her photos?
2. How might we add structure to Karen’s photo’s using AI?
3. How might we make organising photos more fun for Karen?

Develop

Design studio

With each of those “how might we” statements, we scheduled a design studio with the founders of Eppik. A design studio is a diverging framework that takes the How might we’s and attempts to come up with as many solutions as possible.

The five of us set about sketching on paper and came up with lots of ideas. We then voted on those ideas to narrow them down into a list of features for consideration.

Feature prioritisation

We narrowed down our list of features even further to identify those that must be included in the first iteration of the app. The “must have” features selected here were identified as being quick wins that would be essential to getting the basics right for creating an engaging experience to keep users coming back again and again.

Hook model

To really understand how best to do that, we analysed these features through the lens of a “Hook model” which at its core is about creating user habits through four stages.

Firstly, we are looking to trigger users with notifications from the app as well as through the network effect.

The simplest actions a user can do to get a reward would be to add comments, share photos, and react to the shared content.

The rewards in its base level come from the reactions and discussion around photographs and albums.

And we are compelling users to invest and come back again by making it as easy as possible for them to input their information and tell their stories in the app.

Sitemap and Card sorting

The sitemap is the structure of the website and determines how a user flows through their journey. A common feedback in our usability testing was that navigation on the Eppik website was difficult and we thought we could simplify it for the app.

To help re-think navigation, we used a UX tool called card sorting to understand how users might expect information to be organised. Users are given a list of unsorted items and asked to group them where they expect to find them under what titles.

We tested this with 7 users, giving them the base level information to organise into their own categories, and then analysed the results for similarities and differences.

We used Trello for the remote tool as you can see below.

By analysing the results, we have come up with the following app map. The black cards will be the menu icons in the navigation bar.

Wireframes and Usability testing

With the structure, features, and style guide in place we used figma, to collaborate and design the wireframes starting in low detail (low fidelity) and working up to high fidelity. At each level of detail we tested our wireflow on users to ensure the product was easy to use, intuitive, and that the uploading of information felt easy.

The following are the wireframes as they developed with the feedback and iterations we developed from the tests.

Deliver

As I had taken the lead with the client throughout the project, I kicked off a very successful client presentation over Zoom after which we handed over the Figma design files, and the Zeplin file for development. Eppik is currently seeking investment to take the mobile platform live.

Prototype

You can find a version of our prototype here which I would welcome any feedback on.

Or there is a very quick run through on Youtube.

Learnings and What’s next

Learnings

During the initial design we discovered that the three of us broadly disagreed on how we should structure the app and although we had not accounted for a card sort in our project canvas we decided that it would be the best way to discover how best to layout the product.

We found that adding an extra layer of certainty not only saved us time but also fortified our design process to deliver the best product for the users.

In this project we had nobody take the lead on sketching and prototyping so we collaborated on each wireframe via Zoom in the beginning which slowed our process and did not allow for cohesive design. By giving ownership of screens to each team member we sped the process up and still delivered screens that felt consistent as we had a set design system to follow.

What’s next

Eppik is seeking funding to develop their product further and has asked us to stay in touch. They also have very big plans for gamifying their product further which would be exciting to be a part of.

Thank’s for reading!