INTRODUCTION - GramCity

A photographer anxiously scans a map looking for a great location for her night photography shoot. A young film photographer explores a new city, unsure of where the best views can be found. A portrait photographer and their client try to guess which of their shooting locations won’t be too busy.

GramCity successfully solves all of these hiccups and more. GramCity is an extremely powerful tool that seamlessly provides useful information to photographers, helps them be more efficient, more informed, and showcase their work. In order to help GramCity achieve their mobile business goals, I designed a mobile app through a modified GV Design Sprint method.

DAY 1 - User journey, MVP’s

Much of the preliminary user research had already been conducted by GramCity, providing useful information in the form of personas. It provided me with a clear understanding of what both the company and the user wanted, enabling me to create a brief user journey.

DAY 2 - Lightning demo and sketches

For inspiration on current competitors, I examined a number of other companies. These included well-established organizations like Pintrest and Instagram, as well as pieces on Dribbble.com and Behance. While these were helpful, I couldn’t find a business or app that acted as a photographer’s companion specifically. Instagram has tags and suggested locations, but not to the extent that I wanted to see in GramCity.

After the Crazy-8 exercise, I deemed the ‘Map’ page to be the most important. It is both the homepage and the page that connects photographers to locations. Elements can be filtered, locations added and routes created to help photographers map out their adventure.

Sketches of the map and following pages can be found below.

DAY 4 - Prototyping

All of the elements that are needed in the MVP are present here. Users are able to share locations, examine pre-existing ones and even prepare routes of multiple locations if needed. While the UI is relatively simple, I believe it accomplishes what I need it to do.

DAY 5 - Testing, final iterations

I had 5 individuals perform moderated user tests on this build. I asked them to do three things:

1. You’ve noticed more push notifications than you would like. 

2. You heard that the waterfront in Seattle is a great spot for photos. Tell me if that is true or not.

3. You just discovered a cool view of the Ferris Wheel on the water and want to document your finding.

Added navigation tips and hints

Changed location color for added clarity, added information to flags

Increased font weight, added ‘# of Pins’ to filter for better search customization

REFLECTION + CONCLUSION

This GV Design sprint was my first experience researching, sketching and testing a product in a 5-day timeframe. As a photographer myself, I think this product has real-world potential. As time was the biggest restriction, there were some features that were cut in order to achieve business goals, but I’d like to expand on this foundation and continue testing. I also liked the time restriction; working on a deadline pushed me to be focused and deliberate with my design choices.

Duration: 5 days

Role: Project lead, designer, researcher

Skills/Tools:

• Adobe XD

• Competitor analysis

• Sketching

• User testing

At the end of the first day of the sprint I had a mapped user journey including MVP’s. These included -

• Push Notification capability (users shouldn’t have to be glued to their phones to learn about cool photo ops nearby)

• Ability to add a new location or add to nearby locations

• Scannable, scalable map with points of interest and locations photographers have set previously

  • Map to include useful information like weather, popularity and tags indicating what photography might work best (landscape, natural, street photography, etc.)

Research examples -

To better establish what I wanted to see in GramCity, I conducted a Crazy 8 timed exercise.

Addressing the MVP

• Map feature highlights nearby photo locations

• Ability to add and edit pins for good photo spots

  • Ability to add tags for better clarity and information on a specific spot

  • Simple process for adding a photo featuring a location

• Filters for nearby pins made by other photographers

DAY 3 - Sketches to screens

This day was spent focusing on flushing out features that I could test as well as beginning to build out screens in Adobe XD. Due to time, I could only flush out a small number of screens and I feared that it would lead to railroading testers.

Key design choices:

• Simple, easily navigable UI

• Color palette that emphasizes natural colors and tones

• Unobtrusive font

• Bold, easy to find buttons

The prototype I built was structured around users adding a new location. Due to time constraints, I focused on users ability to accomplish that task and get feedback from UI design choices I had made the previous day.

All individuals were able to complete the tasks, although it should be noted that the build isn’t complicated. That being said, I received great insight and suggestions from my findings.

USER PAIN POINTS - 

• User’s didn’t know that the pins were interactive elements, leaving many of them scanning the map looking for a call to action or hint.

• It wasn’t clear to users that the map indicated they were at or near the docks in Seattle.

  • *Note - outside of a testing environment, it is assumed users would tell that they were at or near docks.

• Users wanted to be able to add their own personalized tags; the current build doesn’t allow for this.

  • “If this product is supposed to be a personalized experience for photographers, I’d like to be able to add my own tags.” - Ammon

• Users didn’t have the chance to add photos from their gallery. The only way users could add a location was if they were currently at said location.

  • “Being able to add photos to a location later would be really helpful. As someone who forgets things a lot, it’d be nice to use my photos on my phone away from the location and still be able to add a pin.” - Katie

Adjustments to high fidelity designs:

Overall, users were able to accomplish the tasks with very little to no help. However, if this was a properly built-out product, I’d like the option of having a brief tutorial on how to navigate GramCity. Many apps like the ones I researched have a short ‘How to Use’ experience to help users understand certain aspects of their product and I think GramCity could benefit from this.

Changes to the UI include:

Try the prototype:

GramCity Showcase