Circoo — M. O S E I

Opportunity Space

It's incredible to think that twenty years ago the internet was mainly used for email and chat rooms. The 21st century saw a rise in social networking apps with the likes of MySpace and Hi5. Today, the average person has at least 7.6 social media accounts. With Facebook in the news for abuse of user privacy, emerging social media apps have made privacy a main concern. Circoo is a private communication method that boasts 100% privacy, easy contact management, and no ad disclosure.

Lead Product Designer
10 weeks
Circoo
Product Owners, Visual Designer, Design Research Consultant

GOALS:

Delight users. Increase user retention. Attract new users

Competitive Analysis

To better understand our client’s users’ needs, we did some domain research of other social networking and communication applications to understand the industry. We identified three emerging trends that are shaping this industry:

We then identified 6 competitors that are at the top of the social networking/communication industry and explored their visual branding styles, top features, and user flows.

Redesigning User Flows

USER FLOW AUDIT

To better understand the user flow, we did an audit of the current designs and interactions and identified areas for improvement.

SKETCHES

I brainstormed a few ideas for screen redesigns to get out quick ideas based on the identified areas for improvement in the audit.

EXPLORING STYLE

Since we received some feedback from users about the visual design of the application, we explored some style guides to help refocus the visual design of the application.

BRINGING SKETCHES TO LIFE

Once we were aligned on the improvements to the flow and the visual design direction we would be moving forward with, we created some mockups to get some feedback from our initial user pool.

Final Concepts

HOMEPAGE

The homepage looked too similar to the profile page and could create some confusion for users so we reworked it. Like the profile page, we went for full-bleed images and rounded edges

MESSAGING

I simplified the messaging page and refined the speech bubbles to make them softer to go with the overall theme of the redesign

PROFILE PAGE

For the profile page, I wanted the user’s profile image to be end-to-end since the application is focused on photo sharing. I also prioritized rounded edges for icons

GROUPS/INVITES

We felt that this page was not very intuitive so we reworked it into a more user-friendly page, making users’ circle of friends the focus of the page

Reflections

CLIENT BUY-IN

As a designer, being able to explain the reasons behind my design decisions with data has been an invaluable tool in ensuring client buy-in. For this project, we met with clients each week to report on progress and explain our design direction and decisions to reassure clients and solicit buy-in. We also held several workshops with clients throughout the project to align on the product vision.

FINAL THOUGHTS

We only had a few weeks to do domain research, competitive analysis, mood boards, style tiles, redesigns, microinteractions, a hi-fidelity prototype, and usability/desirability testing, as well as making sure to circle back with clients to be able to move forward at each design phase. While we were able to push through the different deliverables, we felt spread thin and would have liked more time to re-test our improvements to the design based on our initial user test.

We also put together a design system for the brand to maintain consistency in future designs and brand representations.