GRAMCITY

One click away from a beautiful location!

Project Details:

Role: Product Designer. Duration: A week

Team: Laxmi Bhargavi Vaditala, Chris Gierlich

Client:

This is a student project at Springboard and a sprint. I worked on designing the feature, conducted a usability test with five participants, and made changes to the developed prototype.

TLDR

THE PROBLEM :

Gramcity is a photo-editing app where users also want to find Instagrammable locations to take pictures and have an active community to share experiences and photos.

SOLUTION:

A feature within the app allows users to look up Instagrammable places or touristy locations, take pictures, and share them with the Gramcity community.

IMPACT:

Gramcity’s community feature, which allows users to find and share their Instagrammable photos within the app, has helped increase engagement.

Overview:

For the GV Design Sprint challenge(Modified), I have chosen Gram City, a photo-editing app. The Challenge is to create a feature where users can find Instagrammable photo ops. They also aim to create an active community where users can share their favorite photos and locations. Despite the many apps that offer this feature, Gramcity wants to incorporate it to increase its engagement with the app.

Since this is a sprint, I have included each day’s tasks and the work done below-

DAY 1: Map

Research & User Persona:

The question asked for research purposes was, “Tell us how you find great places to take a photo.”

Below are some insights I’ve gained from users for the above question.

  • Users were interested in visually stimulating and bold colors and exciting photo compositions.

  • Less well-known places and famous (touristy) places were on their list.

  • One of the users was interested in taking pictures of places of significance, such as Architecture, history, and culture.

  • I would research Instagram, Pinterest, or other social media.

  • One user did not like to spend much time going to far places for pictures, whereas some users were interested in planning.

Based on the above research insights, two personas were taken into account whose goals were as follows-

Persona 1: Find great places to take photos without spending much time researching and traveling out of the way for a photo.

Persona 2: Find places and examples of photos in a city before planning out a day.

MAP

DAY  2: Sketching

Lightening Demos

I have looked at a few apps on the market with features similar to or close to the one Gramcity is currently working on. TripAdvisor and Expedia are good examples of this purpose. 

I love their design, how they provide photos of the place, what’s unique about it, and reviews and ratings.

I also like that they have forums where other tourists or locals leave

Reviews or suggestions can also be made, and their questions can be answered.


CRAZY 8’s

I’ve decided that this crazy eight sketch is crucial because it's essential to know the user’s location to suggest any touristy, Instagram-able places to take photos.

Also, I thought it's essential to have a Discover page where users can see other people’s photos or reviews, look at the pictures before going to the place, and not waste their time commuting if it's far.

Solution Sketch:

The below solution sketch: Left screen (before critical)—It is essential to share your location before getting suggestions for places. Middle screen (Critical Screen)—Based on the area, the user can see top tourist attractions nearby or explore the places with photos uploaded by other users. Right Screen(After)—The user will share their image with the community.

DAY 3: Story Board

I have drawn the above 7-panel storyboard with the screens I want to prototype. I have included the three main screens I chose in my solution sketch and added a couple more that could be important for the user flow.


DAY 4:  Prototype

The three screens below are the first screens the user encounters. Since this is a Design Sprint, time is of the essence. Hence, prototyping important screens helped achieve the users' goal of finding Instagrammable locations or photo ops near them or in the city they are traveling to.

The screen has search functionality with filters, enabling the users to choose from them or search manually. There is also a community screen where users interact with other users by sharing pictures or posting about any photography events in the city they are currently in, keeping in mind the goal of having an active community.

Also, I have designed a screen with notifications that let users know they are close to a photo opportunity by sending a toast notification to enable their location or turning on their notifications to get these alerts.

Goals to Test the Prototype:

  • This is to see if the users can use this prototype and understand the theme or reasoning behind the screens.

  • Ease of Userflow.

  • What do the users like about this prototype?

  • What do they not like about it?

  • What suggestions do they have to improve the prototype and make their flow even more achievable?


Learning Goal:

  • To see which feature interested the users most.

  • Why did the users not like a specific feature?

  • Understanding the user’s input after going through the entire user flow to make appropriate changes.

  • Users' impressions of the app's design, icons, and color.


Day 5: Test

On day 5, I moved on to test the prototype with 5 participants. 3 out of 5 participants were photography lovers, and the others were from IT firms. I have taken the notes below from these users-

  • Notifications on the home screen (Toast Notification) could have used an Allow or Don't Allow button.

  • Most users only noticed the gamification feature in the app, except for one.

  • The flow was easy, and the users felt the app was straightforward.

  • The community tab can have so much more.

  • The horizontal scroll could have used side arrows. Since the users didn't know if they could scroll, they considered it a design mistake.

  • Uploaded pictures could be posted to the community tab for assurance when the users visit that tab.

  • One of the users thought the color pink was very feminine. (Here, the brand color chosen was pink)


Overall, based on the notes I have collected, I did not see users struggle with the user flow or understanding of the app. However, this app has so much more potential, and many more features can be implemented to make it very engaging. I wish to work on this app in the future and design more interesting features.