Selfie postcard app

Back to the brief…

The use context of the app being “on the go” was the most important aspect of this brief to me and my interpretation meant a product that:

• Is quick and simple to use
• Let’s you get straight back to what you’re doing

Exploring my understanding

I started out with some mind mapping to brainstorm any ideas related to a selfie postcard app and breaking the main users into three groups: the selfie taker, the selfie postcard recipient, and the printing company.

Task analysis

Creating a task analysis of how I thought a user would step through the whole process, from taking the selfie to purchase completion, raised the main concerns and issues I thought I really needed to solve with this app.

Main issues/concerns to overcome for the user:

• What if I can’t remember someones postal address?
• How can I easily and quickly pay while “on the go”?
• Can I personalise my selfie?
• How can I send a selfie postcard right now while I’m “on the go”
• How do I know that my friend/family has received my postcard?

The competition

I also looked at what companies within this space were doing (good and bad) to find any opportunities to differentiate this product.

Opportunity: An app that can be used quickly and easily in the moment.

Creating a persona

Before I start any project I want to know who is the primary user I will be designing for and what they want from this product. In this case I put together an assumptive persona of someone I thought would be using this app.

What is Ashley’s story?

I also wrote a scenario for Ashley so I could think about the main context of use for this app and how outside and internal factors would influence her. I would usually draw a storyboard of how this app would help Ashley at this point to help communicate the vision of the product to others.

Environment

• Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps
• Travelling with some fellow backpacking friends

Mentality

• Living in the moment and doesn’t want to have to remember to do later

Motivations

• To surprise her sister with a selfie postcard of her skiing

External factors

• Could be distracted by sun, snow, and friends

Event trigger

• Has just taken an awesome selfie with the the Alps in the background

Simplifying Ashley’s task

I then went back to my task analysis and thought about how I could simplify each of the stages of sending a postcard to someone if Ashley was using this app. What was the minimum she needed to do to send a selfie postcard and what app interactions could take place to help with this?

User flow

The user flow of how Ashley will navigate the app from taking a selfie to sending the postcard — all on her mobile.

Sketching the concept

Before putting pencil to paper I listed out what I thought each of the screens and states would be and what elements would go into each of these screens/states. Then it was onto sketching ideas.

Wireframing

The wireframing stage let’s me understand how layout, elements, and copy all work together and look on the screen and in the flow. At this stage in the process I usually like to start some usability testing with the wireframes as well to make sure I’m on the right path.

High fidelity

Initially I had the selfie photo (blurred) as the background for most of the screens, but going back to Ashley’s scenario I realised that what was really needed was a simple high contrast UI that could be easily viewed when outside — be it sunny, overcast, or any other conditions. I decided to use a dark on light design with large readable text, icons, and interactions that could be easily carried out by holding it with one hand.

Future exploration

As with every design project there are a multitude of challenges that come up during the course of the project that you want to solve but they have not been given a high priority (or in this case limited time). The challenges I still want to solve for this project are:

• How will the on-boarding experience work? This flow is crucial in this concept to be able to gather important details to make the “in the moment” experience smoother.
• What happens if wifi / data is unavailable or drops out?
• When audio recording a message are there ways that the user could indicate a new paragraph and make use of emojis? Maybe this recording feature is too complicated and users would just prefer typing?
• What would the text message template say? What would be the tone?
• What about the interactions for other ways to upload a selfie into the app? Eg. The user could upload their selfie to the app straight from the Apple Photos library or maybe they could use Apples 3D touch technology. How would these interactions work?