Research - Competitive Analysis, Comparative Analysis, Mood Boards, User Interviews
Design - Feature Prioritization, User Flows, Wireframing, Prototyping, Visual Design
Gabrielle Hope
Mobile App Hero
Many first-time founders have big goals when it comes to applications. As a strategist, I view my role as helping to lead them in building the first product as opposed to the Frankenstein application.
We worked closely with the founder to translate his vision and create a minimum desirable product (Minimum Desirable Product is the simplest experience necessary to prove out a high-value, satisfying product experience for users - Andrew Chen) that focused on his core use case while creating a system that would allow him to increase debate types down the line. Visually, we focused on creating an application that was aesthetically pleasing that focused on his desired audience.
We were in a little bit of a bind as a design team. The founder had already paid for a half-made application and had just moved over to a new mobile development shop. So we started by evaluating and testing the current application. We also conducted a brand sprint to better understand the founder's goals for the app.
Following this work, we did a detailed competitive analysis. The founder had a company that he was eyeing, and we went from the app all the way to glassdoor to help us to better understand what went wrong with the competition. With all of this research in mind, we sought to create a simple debate app that would focus squarely on getting people creating and engaging.
The main challenge in creating this application was figuring out how to set up cases. The founder wanted to do 4 different types of cases, so we had to figure out how to efficiently help users set up and post a case.
In the visual design phase, we used various moodboards to get an idea of how the founder wanted to present his brand. The founder had a vision in his head but wasn't easily able to articulate it. So we showed drastically different moodboards and then asked him questions to get closer and closer to the brand image he wanted to present. We ended up focusing on something colorful yet subdued.
We delivered to the development team an application that allowed users to:
