Spontit
A mobile app that enables users to send their own mobile push notifications.
Problem
Spontit is a startup company that designed an app that allows its users to send push notifications with ease. In the Spring of 2020, they had released a new redesign of their app and needed help understanding the pain points and challenges users were facing with the new interface.
The Challenge
For this project I was brought onto the team as the UX Designer, to understand if the users were able to navigate around the app and to suggest any improvement to the app. Our overall goal was to simplify the experience of sending and receiving push notifications using the newly designed Spontit app.
Role
UX Designer
Key Contributions
Usability Testing
Site maps
High Fidelity Designs
Team
Spontit CEO
UX Designer (me)
Tools
Zoom
Miro
Sketch
Scope
1 month
Solution
THE PROCESS
Discover
Usability Interviews
Define
Personas
How Might We's
Ideate
Site Map
Sketching
Design
High Fidelity Mockups
Discover
USABILITY INTERVIEWS
I wanted to learn more about the users of Spontit and test the current version of the app, so I conducted usability interviews with
4 of their current users through Zoom.
My interviews started with brief introductions, the context of the interview, in-depth questions as to their current experience with Spontit, and specific tasks to complete.
Here were the main objectives of the usability tests:
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Is the user able to clearly articulate what Spontit does?
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Is the user able to send a push notification?
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Is the user able to discover and share channels within the app?
USABILITY TEST RESULTS
Based on the usability test insights, we see that users struggle to understand the main purpose of this app which is to send and receive notifications. Possible solutions are to have the notification feature more prominent on the interface, and have the homepage have a welcoming message that prompts the new user to follow channels.
Define
PERSONAS
During the usability interviews with the 4 users, I was also able to ask in-depth questions on their goals and motivations for using the Spontit app. I wanted to understand what their needs were and how Spontit helps accomplishes that. After analyzing the data, I gathered that Spontit users comprise of 2 main personas: The Event Organizer and The Journalist/Activist
HOW MIGHT WE'S
How do we help users make sense of the process of sending push notifications?
How do we help users explore and share channels more efficiently?
Ideate
SITE MAPS
We see that in the usability findings. participants struggled to find the notification feature and understand what channels are within the app. This could be due to the push action and the create channel feature being hidden within subpages of the app.
To decrease the struggle of locating the push action, I created a page solely for creating a push notification and organizing channels. Because the push action is one of the main actions on the app, I felt it was best to bring this new page to the center amongst the other pages.
SKETCHES
The next step was to sketch my ideas for potential design solutions. Since the Push Page and My Channels Page are newly added pages on the bottom navigation, I wanted to sketch out these pages in full detail. I also wanted to improve the overall content organization for the app on other pages as well.
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Feed - contains a message when a new user first opens the app the prompts them to create channels
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Push Page - Allows the user to send push notification and from their selected personal channels
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My Channels Page - Created to organize personal channels apart from followed channels
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Discover page - Horizontal scrolling menu of topics on the top makes it easier for user to find channel topics
Design
Next, I brought my ideas together and created designs on the Sketch app and a mobile prototype on InVision. I ensured that I implemented my ideas while maintaining the Spontit app's design system.
HIGH FIDELITY MOCK-UPS
Outcomes and Reflection
This was my first real-world project and I learned a lot in keeping constant communication with the CEO, Josh. After presenting the design decisions to Josh, he was pleased with the results and plans to implement some of my ideas in the next iteration of the app.
Looking back at this project, I would also like to build an onboarding process for the new user. Knowing that the users have trouble understanding the app's purpose, guiding them through an onboarding page would help guide them.