8Tiv

Project

8Tiv: A social media app tailored specifically for creatives

Timeline

8 Weeks (October - December 2020)

Role

Team Leader

Approach

Goal-Directed Design

See Process

Introduction

In a completely online environment, for my Interaction Design I course, we were tasked with the project to create an app prototype through a Goal-Directed Design (GDD) approach. Goal-Directed Design is a process that is based on the goals of users through the phases of research, modeling, requirements, and frameworks.

At the beginning of the semester, I pitched an app idea that would be known as “8Tiv”, a social media designed specifically for creative and artistic people who want to share their work and connect with communities of those with similar interests. After some people had shown interest in working on this app idea, I became a team leader for a group of a few other of my classmates to develop the prototype for this app. As the team lead, I organized meetings and schedules, kept us on track with upcoming deadlines, and cooperated with my teammates for them to work according to their strengths.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to hold face to face meetings. Accordingly, we had done our work virtually by utilizing the online Collaborative Whiteboard, Miro. To have meetings, we would meet on our team Discord chat where we could discuss through calls or messages. Throughout the project, we collaborated and completed the prototype going through the Research, Modeling, Requirements, and Frameworks phases.

View Prototype

Research ➔ Modeling ➔ Requirements ➔ Frameworks ➔ Refinement

Research

As the first phase in Goal-Directed Design, the Research Phase helps the team better understand information regarding the realm of the app, such as the user’s goals, the environments it will be used in and past applications that function similarly. This phase is crucial to setting the team up for success for the rest of the project. Although we had to be flexible and unconventional for many of these aspects, we completed the Research Phases through a kickoff meeting, lit review, competitive analysis, and user interviews.

Kickoff Meeting

As team, we concluded that the current state of social media has focused primarily on showcasing ourselves. What existing social media apps fail to address is creativity, community, and specificity. Our mobile app will address this gap by putting more focus into the things that users create and share.

Lit Review & Competitive Analysis

For our lit review, I tasked my team with finding similar applications as ours such as Behance, Instagram, and DeviantArt, and finding information that we could utilize to better understand the domain. We then met as a group and compared our competitors in a graph that showcases our analysis.

Based on our findings, it was evident that none of our competitors can provide everything that we were planning to offer. The community-centered apps lacked a focus on creative work, while the creative-centered apps lacked a focus on community. The closest competitor that focused on both community and creatives was DeviantArt, but there were many user complaints and structural issues we discovered in our research.

User Interviews

User interviews are crucial for any design because this is where you gain insights for user behavior. We made sure to interview at least four willing participants for this process. Unfortunately, due to some timing issue with the Institutional Review Board (IRB), the process of getting approved to do user research would take too long for the deadline that we were given, so we could only interview our classmates. Thankfully, our degree program, Interactive Design, is filled with creative students, so we were able to get valuable information. Also, since this semester was completely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all interviews were conducted on video calls through Discord.

A common trend that arose from all our interviews was that creatives enjoyed sharing their work and connect with others on other platforms to feel a sense of belonging to a group or community. Also, they all felt the need to separate their personal accounts from their creative accounts so that they could freely express themselves without feeling like they were spamming or bothering their followers.

Ultimately, we created a research report to refer to for the remainder of the project and compile all of our findings into one document. You can view the whole report below. Mapping these insights to common trends from the participants led us into the Modeling Phase, where we created a persona that would guide us for the rest of the Goal-Directed Design process.

Click to Download Research Report

Modeling

The main takeaway of the Modeling Phase is constructing an efficient persona for the app based on our prior research. Personas are a valuable tool in the design process because they help us design for specific individuals with specific needs. Since Design is never guesswork, we need to be clear on who will be using our app throughout the remainder of the process.

As a team, we mapped observed behaviors from the Research Phase to understand common behaviors from our participants. From our results, we created our primary persona for the app, Davina Shepherd.

Requirements

In the Requirements Phase, the “what” of Interaction is established by our team. To discover this, we construct a context scenario and a requirements list that consists of what is needed for our persona, Davina Shepherd, to succeed.

Our context scenario told the story of Davina’s day in a life of using the 8Tiv app for her photography practices. This scenario gives a high-level overview of how our app can best serve our persona’s needs. For my role as the team lead, I facilitated a meeting where we went hour by hour with our group members on a shared document brainstorming how Davina would think, what she would do, and why she would do it. As a group, we created this context scenario.

Using our narrative as a base, we then constructed a requirements list of what would need to be included in the app to support our wireframes and designs in the Frameworks Phase.

Frameworks

As we have now developed a requirements list for our persona to succeed using our app from all of the previous phases, we move in to the Frameworks Phase. In this stage, it was important for us to create paths for our persona to accomplish her goals from the previous phase. With a low-fidelity prototype, we were able to present her pathways.

Firstly, as a team we worked together to complete her key-path scenario, the most important scenario for our persona to accomplish her goal. In this project, that would be for her to upload a photo to her community. Since this is the most important path, we all discussed the path and its contents.

After completing the key-path scenario, we then divided different validation scenarios for each group member. These validation scenarios are the less traveled but still possible paths for our persona. Every member created at least one path on their own, while we collaborated on some of the more complicated paths. In the end, we completed the Frameworks Phase with our completed wireframe.

Refinement

After completing the main four phases of the Goal-Directed Design process, we were left with an almost complete app that just needed to be styled and refined. Before transforming our wireframes into high-fidelity prototypes, I created a logo for the app to have an identity.

Using the logo that I created for reference, my teammate created a couple of initial screens with components that would be used throughout the design. With her screen designs for reference, the team translated our paths from the Frameworks Phase into a high-fidelity prototype.

After having a completed, working prototype, we shared the link with some of our previous interviewees and conducted a usability test. I facilitated two testing sessions that had the user take on certain tasks to complete within the app. From these sessions, we were given feedback about unclear icon designs, animations that threw them off, and some positive feedback about parts that we did well. After some adjustments from our usability testing, we had a final product.

View Prototype

Conclusion

By the end of the semester, we had created a final product that we all proud of and felt that it showcased the efforts that we put in. A major takeaway I earned from this project was the importance of relying on teammates and having clear communication with them. I was fortunate to have a great group who would give and receive feedback for us all to improve in our project and design skills.

Looking back, there are many things that I would do differently. For example, our prototype was inconsistent and has many issues. The app itself was too complex for us to design in a small amount of time. If I were to do it again, I would think simpler, so we can focus more on better execution.