Hani Buskila
every-body design studio
UI / UX / MOBILE / ENTERPRISE
Collect media
of your children
2018
Story mobile app
OVERVIEW
Online album consist of all kinds of media and texts of our children, with the option to print every period of time an accuall physical album.
usually we just drop tons of images into a cloud or in our mobile images storage and forgetting about them. texts like child giggles are mostly forgotten somewhere in our long memory storage. We don’t remember those moments which has made us fill so thankful back then.
When we would like to search some image from our mobile camera roll. We better know the date or else, we will probably not gonna find it.
There are a lot of applications out there suggesting album printing from storage which is great, but there is a reason why most of our children still don’t have an album – we don’t accually have the time to pick those photos one by one from 1000+ photos in stock.
The challenge
1
One of the things that young parents desperately need is time. For that reason the app augh to save that time instead of spending it on photo picking. So, how do we do it? How can we offer that perfect product with all the personal and manual information, meticulously written and chosen, without spending to much time?
2
Secondly, mothers, especially working mothers are suffering from birth amnesia which means that out memory is not sharp as it was before births. Remember what out child told us that made us laugh, or that funny letter switching etc. is not that easy and we surely don’t want do forget important moments and that what it’s all about. Not forgetting important moments.
3
The third challenge is about applications habits. Instagram and facebook are mobile apps that can storage our images during the years in albums. We need though, prove that managing children stuff together is more organized way to remember, arrange and print memories after. Therefor the app have to show that value right at the beginning of using it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be clear enough why using it and not Facebook or Instagram.
Research
7
interviews
I have conducted interviews with 1 father 4 mothers and 1 grandmother assuming that this is the target audience I’m addressing. I was eager to find out whether this audience which I’m include in, see the need as I see it, and what are
their solutions today, if any.
They have been asked for several quastions and later on have complited two tasks inside the application.
i’ve asked
How do you keep your child/children
memories today?
How many times a year do you print personal
photos of your family?
Are you generally satisfied with the solutions
you familer with?
Tell me about the last time you captured a milestone
in one of your child’s life
to keep documenting your child’s media?
Findings
High frustration
Mothers feels frustrated from the endless attempts of getting unique albums to their children. Especially older moms with up to 2 children. They feel like they capture a lot but never look at it.
Printed album
A lot of them say they feel that the endless documentation totally missed the target these days since they had in their childhood at least one organized printed album to browse through.
Search is difficulte
Parents described the presentation preset as a big frustration where they search one photo back and forth and not always find what they wanted.
Only mothers
Mothers are more likely to use the app especially young mothers. They are highly motivated and still not did the mistake of overloading the storage . I decided to develop the MVP prototype accordingly.
Too much effort
95% of the tasks finished sucssesfully.
the ongoing actions speed though, wansn’t smooth enough. that’s why I did a major improvement with this issue especially by progressive disclosure.
RESEARCH CONCLUSION
it was impressive to see that how much the pain is common and the main goal is one place which gathered those memories together. Moreover, a physical album is desirable more then I expected.
Edit mode vs. Feed mode
& usability testing
With low- fidelity paper wireframes I can plan the general structure of the application. Without much effort, adjustments could be made before going into complicated digital implementation. In this case, paper prototypes were for self use. Later on, high fidelity prototypes were made for usability testing since my project leaning on design.
In low-fidelity paper wireframing I have made 2 or 3 structure ideas. The major challenge was answering the question how the main feed would be like. What is the right structure to display different kinds of media in a fluent way like a good story. There are a lot of ways of showing albums. Most of the albums we know are presenting images. The closest app which displays defferent kinds of media (texts, photos…) is facebook. However, my album should tell a story instead of technically show media posts. The place where comments tells the story of the post, story app tells the story using the images and supported texts and titles made by the app itself and by the user.
It was very clear that the titles needs the right copyright thinking and design spaces in order to emphasize what the story is all about and make it interesting to read (or scroll).
Progressive disclouser
The posts themselves are really the big issue. If it will be a good storyteller, the value will be great for the user, and he will be invest in , and continue using it.
Therefore, I used in progressive disclosure idea where post information is given in small pieces. There are clues to get more piece of information when those clues are also limited preventing overwhelming.
The use of story telling
Images are seperated from texts. every media type gets its place. it ensures a fluent, more intersting story that keeps us up to date with a multiple tiers. Think about it: you scroll down and you see some images (the good ones) with this large title telling was is it about and where it was, later you can see a text explaining what the father has thought about in this particular event. later the child voice telling about the story in the next morning. All of these three makes us a great story to keep for our children when they grow old.
Navigation
The main navigation refers to the album itself (not the app) is the vertical menu at the top of the screen. It navigates between perdiods of time according to the child’s age.
Let’s take an example of one year old child. the navigation will refer the different periods in 3 months chunks. The marked period displays the stories referring to this time. Now, when a mother is looking for the first smile picture and description, all she need to do is click on the period she assumed it happened. This case 0-3M/3-6M.
It saves us a lot of effort in the times we look for an image to import into a presentation (think about a bar mitzvah presentation or another cases we get nostalgic, or a special milestone we woul’d like to share with someone. This solution aliined with thw assumption we can’t remember the date, but we can remember the age.
So we now know how to get those memories according to the period of time it happen.
But what about these things we want to search according to the context?
a few years ago I have started a new job. We were a great team right at the first beginning. The job was interesting as my team members. One day we talk about our children and how we spend our afternoon with them. I remembered on some time I fill in our home pool and let my son play with the water with some old buckets. I showed him how the water falls and he was laughing so hard! It was so cute and fun getting this interaction with him. So I looked for this video in my video roll, scrolling up , more and more , not knowing if I already missed it or shouldn’t give up.
Searching memories
Let’s take this situation but now assume I have the search feature. I don’t surely know when it happened. I can assume it was about 1 year and a half. But the most remunerable detail is that it happened in a #pool. And if I’ll search “pool” it probably pops up.
Oh, it didn’t pops? I guess I was to busy to add this tag when I uploaded the video.
Now I can search by another categories: maybe some keywords which can appear in the title or memo. The location where did that happen. Locations in story app are not just geographic locations, but also relative like: grandparents house, daddy’s office etc.
And the last parameter of searching is the category parameter. Stories are per-divided into categories which set at the back end. Those categories were determined by a researches at the interiews stage. We tooked the most common events and areas where children and parents has interaction.
Two ways for adding a new story
In order to cut the open loop of parents about the effort invested in their child’s documentation, STORY app suggest right after the last story in feed, to fill in the next one. The app knows to suggest a relate story fits to the child age and the context.
this is a great solution for the parents frustration of the effort invested in these kind of tasks. when some outsource is leading you to the task it can be even a fun activity to have.
from the other hand, the app dosen’t accually knows us. what if we don’t have nothing to say about the last time our child play in playground?
for this scenario I created the feature “upcoming events”, where I can watch the suggested events/stories and pick the one that really happen lately. didn’t found the specific one? no problem. go to “search” and search for keywords. it will give you the story half full, with title, ideas etc.
Conclusion
Write conclusion text
What about
your idea?
E: hanigirl@gmail.com
A: Manot 171 Israel 2523700