A new way to promote and encourage reciprocity
Gratify is a real-time marketplace where people can ask for favors in return. It's often that we find ourselves in a situations where we can't do something on our own and need help or advice from someone, but we don't know who to ask or who could help us.
With Gratify, all you have to do is just ask what you need, and Gratify will attempt to find people in your area who can help you resolve your dilemma within the minutes.
When asked to do the redesign of Gratify, I first had to deconstruct the existing product in order to learn more about the user characteristics, needs, desires and preferences.
My first step, was to determine what the current pain points were and to measure the usability goals of tasks performed by the users.
As a design challenge, I researched, ideated, created wireframes, prototyped and visually designed the new app. Based on the research I had from the version one, the user research has provided me with better understanding the user's needs and motivations, so that I could develop a product that they truly love.
To continue the design process, I needed to understand existing scenarios as well test the new hypotheses. For storyboarding I tried out various stories that can happen in real situations in real life.
To better understanding the audience I was designing for, I created personas based on the current users. These personas guided me through the development process, helping me to focus on problem that I was solving.
My main goal was to keep the biggest focus on the user tasks. Since the usability of metrics were low, I wanted to provide a better user experience by breaking down the required actions to achieve the task.
User flows were created to lay down the basic roadmap for what a user can do. We focused on two main users:
The point of wireframes is to assign functionality to each screen and show the dependency between the screens.
After a couple rounds of iterations with the wireframes, I was ready to design out the hi fidelity mock-ups. I based the UI components on the material framework since the development team was currently working with it.
Adding animations can push an app from the realm of being usable to begin delightful. Since the product didn’t provide the immersive experience, I thought the UI could benefit from adding transitions from one screen to another, to let the user know something is happening in background, without influencing the user experience.
Before creating the landing page, I reflected on a couple key points: Does the landing page contain information that the user would be interested in? Does it clearly and succinctly describe the product in a language that the targeted user understands? Does it address the first questions that will pop in my users minds when they see my landing page?...
