GramCity App Case Study
Overview
About GramCity
GramCity is a photo editing app that helps users easily make their photos look more photogenic before sharing them on Instagram or other social media networks. The company wanted to design a new feature that helps users find the most Instagram-able physical locations to take a photo in any city.
Goal
Create an active community of users who find and share favorite locations. GramCity wants to explore how and where they can help their users find great photo-ops nearby.
Design Constraints
Design a feature for the GramCity mobile app
GramCity wants to help users find physical places and locations and create an active community of users who find and share favorite locations.
My Role
UX/UI Designer
I was initially provided with research notes from conducted user interviews by the startup. As an independent UX/UI Designer, I analyzed the gathered research, mapped out user research flow, and designed user interface screens. My role was to create a minimum viable product (MVP) to test within one week.
Deliverable
An interactive mobile prototype
The Process
A modified version of Google Ventures’ (GV) Design Sprint with the following schedule:
Day 1 | Map–User Research and User Story Mapping
Day 2 | Sketch–Competitor Research and Sketching Solution Ideas
Day 3 | Decide–Make Solution Idea Decision and Storyboarding
Day 4 | Prototype–Build High Fidelity Prototype
Day 5 | Test–Usability Testing
Research and Problem Definition
Day 01 — Mapping
My first task was to review and analyze notes from the previously conducted user interviews.
I was able to analyze themes and identify the pain points of users who were traveling and looking for great photo locations.
Interview question
How do you find great new places to take photos?
Patterns
Users want to find great places to take photos and document their trips.
Users don’t want to spend a lot of time searching for places to take photos, or constantly taking photos and missing out on the travel experience.
Users also want to easily find locations and examples of the best photo ops in a city before planning out their day around visiting them.
Start and the end/long term goal
Users can utilize their time to document their trips and not miss out on their travel experiences. Users can easily find locations and examples of the best photo ops before deciding to visit them.
For users who don’t have a lot of time in one place and want to get the best possible photos when they are there. Quickly find addresses or details of the locations.
Users won’t miss out on some good photo ops that were already near them
Have unique photos
When traveling, users want to take good photos because they never know when they will get back to those places.
Statement of Purpose
“How might we design a feature to help users find awesome places to take photos, wherever they are.”
Personas
Solution
Since most users don’t want to waste their time searching for locations and they want to have the best photos when traveling, a good solution would be to gather information on the user’s specific interests upon app launch. The user could first answer questions about their interests, such as tourist attractions, art, architecture, etc. Then the app can navigate them to possible places to take photos, and display shared photos from other users related to the topics they chose. With this method, they can also plan their trips ahead of time and make better decisions.
Map
Day 02 - Sketches
Lightning Demos
I conducted competitor research to see how they addressed similar problems. What came to my mind were Explorest, Instagram, and Yelp.
Explorest
I chose Explorest because it has a clean design, and looks organized
Instagram also gives me a good idea about how photos are organized. It shows different photos in a specific location. However, for the mobile interface, I think the three-column photo display is quite small.
Yelp
I chose Yelp for some specific reasons. One of the reasons is I like how the map displays possible places once the user opens the app. Also, I like the rating idea and comments, which help users make decisions when they research about that location. For these reasons, I may integrate similar functionality into the GramCity app so that the information about the popularity, tips, and recommendations of a place among other users can be displayed alongside the photos.
Crazy 8’s – 8 minutes, 8 slots, 8 designs
I selected the “view photos” as the most critical screen since most interviewees said that they want to check out the place before they go, and to see whether it is a good photo op to visit. Gramcity wanted to focus on helping users save time by showing recommended photos and places for users before they get there. I played with a few ideas on how to display the photos effectively and create a sense of the Gramcity community.
Day 03 — Decide
Storyboarding
On this day, I sketched out the possible solutions. From the crazy 8’s, I chose my critical screen as the displayed photo page. I then made a few solutions by sketching out screens before and after my critical screen.
Final solution storyboarding
Day 04 — Prototype
In this step, I built an interactive prototype for usability testing, which focused on the MVP. I used Sketch to create digital user interface (UI) screens which followed the screens on the storyboard. I then uploaded them onto InVision.
Day 05 — Test
To validate my proposed solution, I conducted a usability test with five potential users who all love traveling and taking photos. Due to the pandemic, I conducted the interviews remotely. Each interview took from 25 - 30 minutes.
Positive feedback
Users enjoyed the process and liked how the app could show great photo spots based on their preferences.
Users liked posts that showed details of the places, such as hours, best times to go, and tips.
Users loved the fact that they could organize their trip by adding photo-op locations to the plan.
Critical feedback
Navigation — some users preferred to see the map before seeing the photo gallery, while others preferred to see the photo gallery first.
Conclusion - Lessons Learned
I enjoyed working in a modified GV Sprint. The rapid nature of this Sprint helped me make progress quickly. It was a helpful and productive method for quickly testing an idea for viability.
My biggest challenge was trying not to overthink ideas or small details. What makes GV Sprint great is that it only focuses on the prioritized functions and it doesn’t take long to test out an idea.
Link to Prototype
