Digital note-taking, can it be better?

Wing Chun
4 min readMar 20, 2022

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This writeup is part of the Capstone Project of the 8-Course Interaction Design Specialization on Coursera. It is the culmination of eight courses covering user experience design.
Link to course: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design).

Link to case study on portfolio:
https://sites.google.com/view/wing-chun-ux-portfolio

TL;DR

Jote is a note-taking app that seeks to fill up gaps of existing digital note-taking app. You can find the link to the high-fidelity prototype here.

Jote app banner image

Project overview

The product
Jote is a digital note-taking app that seeks to fill up gaps of existing digital note-taking app. Many existing apps currently has elaborate features that typical users would find useful. However, through competitive audits it is clear that there are room for improvements not yet explored.

The goal
Design a digital note-taking app that explores untapped features of existing similar apps.

Product function
1. The app allows users to create and personalize categories for their notes
2. The app allows users to lock notes with sensitive information
3. The app allows users to set reminder on important notes

My role
UX designer designing an app for Jote from conception to delivery.

My responsibilities
Conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility and iterating on designs.

Tools

Figma & Photoshop

Ideation

With smartphones we are able to convert many traditional tasks into one device, with one of the most utilized — digital note-taking. The app seeks not just to digitalize and mimic traditional note-taking, but improve efficiency by allowing users to organize their notes according to their needs. We want users to be able to be more efficient in their note-taking and help them reach their end goal easier and faster.

Storyboards and paper prototypes are created to visualize and understand the purpose of the app and user pain-points.

Storyboard 1

Storyboard 2

Paper prototypes

Prototype 1
Prototype 2

Heuristic Evaluation

I’ve conducted an online evaluation from 3 participants with the paper prototype and identified 10 violations after synthesizing the organized data.

Table containing a heuristic evaluation analysis to help understand issues with the paper prototypes.

The feedback from participants helped identified violations to be improved on. They serve as guidelines and directions for the wireframe to develop. With that, I’ve created low-fidelity wireframes to begin laying the foundations of the fundamental ideas down to kickstart the design process.

Plan & Skeleton

With the paper prototypes and feedback synthesised and improvised, I moved on to creating wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes to work towards testing stage. You can find the link to Jote’s low-fidelity prototype here.

Screenshot of low-fidelity prototype.

Testing

An online zoom usability study that took place remotely with 2 participants are conducted. The session lasted 10 to 15 minutes. This is an early testing round to fish out kinks and edges with the prototype so the A/B testing won’t be exhausted and the feedback may be more helpful.

After the test, the method for A/B testing is identified. The focus of the A/B testing is to analyze whether users find colour or iconography more efficient/effective in identifying different note categories.

Screenshot of Jote app showing iconography vs colour indication comparison

A/B testing

The prototype was tested by 4 participants hired through UserTesting.com to obtain feedback. A comprehensive test plan was prepared prior to launching the test to participants.

Screenshot of the UserTesting site.
Test plan for Jote app’s prototype
Screenshot of participant 1 taking part in Jote’s A/B testing
Screenshot of participant 2 taking part in Jote’s A/B testing
Screenshot of participant 3 taking part in Jote’s A/B testing
Screenshot of participant 4 taking part in Jote’s A/B testing

You can find the link to A/B testing prototype here

Results!

To summarize for the A/B testing part, it is shown that 4 out of 4 users prefer option B with different colours indicating different categories instead of option A with only iconographies. It seems users prefer to be able to identify different note categories faster over having a clean minimalist look.

Screenshot of Jote app’s final high-fidelity prototype

You can find the link to the high-fidelity prototype here.

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