‘ Life‘s Road ’ A Mapping-Your-Journey App (Product Design Case Study)

Chronologically Cronicaling Your Capers as a Crocodile Catcher and all your other Conquests.

Life’s Road: the app where you can keep yourself

Timeframe: 3 weeks

Context: Project for the portfolio.

A Multi-Tool for Multiple Experiences

Living a rich and fulfilling life is somehow seemingly incomplete without journaling; and so many people recommend it.

Product Case Study Disclosure

So, I’m presenting this product case study because, sensibly, it’s good for people to have examples to base their judgements on. For me to present my work and methods as a product designer I need a way to elicit those judgments. I’m passionate about solving problems and for anyone with journals,which includes me, I think figuring out a way to search and access them presents a serious dilemma; especially if you like handwriting them as I do. I believe journaling has many intrinsic qualities and envisioning a way to see my life at-a-glance just feels empowering. It’s nice being able to remember those special moments from our lives and to access those memories easily.

Working the Problem

Having a framework to approach my work is always helpful especially when problems are complicated. A 4-step process structures my workflow and, because of its cyclical nature, allows me to identify and resolve emerging issues.

The Need for a Timeline

While I was going through old photos and papers left to me by my parents, I realized that many of the journals overlapped with old letters and cards written and received during the same time period. I also discovered that the photo albums were not all in chronological order, but rather they were a mishmash of different rolls of film taken at different times. What I needed was a chronological structure that I could organize all the different photos and documents into.

Problems in Archiving, Chronology, and Connection

Meet Julie, Paul, and Susan; each of them have a particular type of problem unique to their preferences, habits, and interests.

Basic Archiving

Susan buys composition notebooks to record almost every aspect of her life. She writes her personal journal entries in them almost religiously. She also uses them in her work as a project manager at a small construction company. Over the years, Susan has amassed a large collection of notebooks. Most of them are just filled with scribbles, whereas other entries are much more important. She has been writing in them for so long that she doesn’t intend to change her ways. Plus, while in meetings with clients she can get away with taking notes without having to explain, unlike when she is using her cellphone; she likes that freedom.

Susan’s problem is that she wants to easily look back at old journal entries.

Referencing Chronology

Paul’s job requires that he maintains a security clearance, but this requires him to keep track of the people he meets and the places he travels; and Paul likes to travel a lot. Keeping track of everywhere he goes and everything he does gets pretty tedious. He has used google maps but this isn’t always accurate and doesn’t give him a place to jot down notes he wants to remember. Paul has also tried using cloud-based documents to keep his travel-timeline straight but these required him to come up with his own structure and to keep it all organized. Plus, it isn’t very mobile friendly.

Paul’s problem is that he wants a structured way to track his travels from day to day.

Fresh Memories

Julie doesn’t like using social media very much. Sure, she has accounts with Facebook and Instagram, but only because her friends asked her to. She just doesn’t feel the need to create posts for everyone to see. Julie does, however like collecting and sharing specific memories with friends and family. She is very interested in recording people’s different accounts from the same event as a sort of historic narrative that can be shared later. This requires Julie to ask people to share their perspective and memories. You could say that Julie is a hobbyist-historian . Her efforts to collect these personal perspectives from others is often done through email. Julie doesn’t like having to do it this way because it usually requires her giving some context of the type of information she is seeking — doing this influences their fresh memory of the event and she doesn’t want their memory influenced by her priming.

Julie’s problem is that she wants a way that she can elicit people’s thoughts and memories they’d like to share regarding a date or time or place.

Summary of Problems

• Archiving
• Chronological
• Shareable

Creating a System

One of the great features of the toy, Lego, is that everything was built on a system. Tackling this design problem I knew would required a system that could categorize the various aspects of a documented life. Some things in life last for an extended period of time while others only last but for a moment. Developing the right kind of system would make or break the product.

Defining the Structure of the System with Words

At first, I believed that I needed to use words to define the structure of the system. For example, an era is defined as ‘a long and distinct period of history with a particular feature or characteristic’. Some eras reoccur while others are very singular in nature; some even overlap. To complicate matter, the word era suggests a time period that extends beyond one or two generations; or at least that is what the word communicated to me. Finding the right words to categorize and organize the structure is essential.

Another potential word was Phase or Phases; however, it to suggested to me something slightly different than what I thought the project needed. For example, the word phase suggested to me that if there were more than one then they would need to be sequentially ordered. Using words that communicated rigidity I thought would be off-putting to users. I wanted the structure for the system to serve independently of any defining words. However, I also felt in my gut that this problem of words was potentially unavoidable. The word Chapter is more abstract but still lends to the idea of sequentiality. Sifting through various word possibilities and determining how they would interact with each is the crux of this UX design project.

A question appeared early into the brainstorming session: why not enable the user to choose how to categorize their own groupings of time — selecting between phases, chapters, seasons, moments, etc. and even eras. However, presenting the user with too many choices during setup may turn them off to using the app. Additionally, the development of the product would require applying names to the features.

Icon Symbol Concepts

I liked the idea of a kite with lines to represent the app. People and their personalities are often ‘tethered’ to their experiences. Our own experiences ground us to our lives but also allow us to gain lift and sail higher. The squiggly lines on the kite represent to me the structure of the system and words being communicated. These lines on the kite are displayed to the world.

Background and Coloring

I chose the dark background and highlighted text because it reminds me of coding and the software development workspace. As much as I like it, it’d be prudent to allow the user to select from a range of templates to meet their preference; light or dark with available palets and backgrounds. For the “phasing” (or extended periods), I used the same color for continuity but gave it some transparency to allow for overlap. For the overall design feel, I wanted to avoid a cluttered look and to lean toward simplicity.

Fonts

For fonts, I wanted something that seemed standardized and easily familiar. Stenciling seemed like an obvious choice to provide the generic standardized feel and familiarity. For a complementary font, I wanted it to be sharp, futuristic and forward leaning. I chose Allerta Stencil to be the ‘Branding’ font and Ubuntu to be the complementary functional font; both were available on Google Slides

Features Board

Development Requirements

The elements of this product are fairly straight forward in that a column like structure will feature current markers at the top and bottom that the user can choose to display, i.e. “now” and a begin date, most likely their date of birth or the date their parents met. Time-frame markers are available throughout and are available based on user-preferences. Each element or feature would need to have customizable aspect to it in order for the user to engage with the app and apply preference and personality to their roadmap/timeline.

Customization

Because of the intimate nature and the customization features this product demands, I drafted up the some of the possibilities. The potential for user-assigned significance adds another level of individuality and customization.

Potential to Expand

Using 3-dimensional structures that rotate will provide multiple sides by which users may partition their timelines into categories suchs: Personal, Professional, World Events, etc.

Elements

There are potentially several more elements than are displayed below; namely: a sharing page, element page, settings page, and a display page.

What is shown are (from left to right):

• The Log-In Page
• The Search Page
• The The Log-Out Page
• The Discover Page (Timeline Accesses Page)
• The Register Account Page

Usability testing

Using the Nielsen Norman Group’s definition of usability, I attempted to apply a theorized test based on the following criteria:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Results

All on a scale of 1–5 (1=easy/5=difficult), our averages came out to be:

• Learnability: 3
• Efficiency: 4
• Memorability: 2
• Errors (1=few, 5=many): 2
• Satisfaction (1=unpleasant, 5=very pleasant): 5

A Big Realization

My biggest realization came from using both Sketch and Figma and discovering that each has its definitive pros and cons. Another realization is that I think I would be happy to use whichever tool the majority of my team uses; realizing that I am versatile in that way was, I think, a confidence booster.

Market Potential

I spoke with professional archivist about this project and he said that it or something like it would be very useful. The potential to monetize it would probably rest it’s usage of digital storage space.

Acknowledgments:

• Eden Wen & Greg Soper for being wonderful mentors and for letting me pilfer some of their presentation framework.
• Dainun Skeem, a professional archivist at Brigham Young University, for confirming many of my assumptions.

Resources:

• Google Slides / Figma / Sketch
• Mac Photos and Print Screen (command+shift+3)
• Snappa.com (step images)
• Images: Legos / Woman-1 / Cellphone / Ideate & Design / Blue Kite / Notebooks / Man / Binders of Paper / Emails / Woman-2 /
• Definitions: Era /