GRAMCITY CASE STUDY | DESIGN SPRINT

Help travelers discover & save great photo spots on the go

Project type
Solo student project

Timeline
5 days (Design Sprint)

My role
Product Designer
UX Researcher

Tools used
Figma
Adobe Illustrator

The Context

Gramcity is a photo editing app that lets users make their photos look great before sharing them on social media networks.
Recently, they have focused on improving accessibility and enhancing the user experience for their app.

Design Constraints

A feature for mobile app
Wants to help users find physical places & locations.
Create an active community of users who find & share their favorite locations.

The Objective

Design a new feature to help users discover great places to photograph, and decide whether it should be released.

PROBLEM

Finding good photo ops is stressful and time-consuming when traveling

SOLUTION PREVIEW

A solution for discovering & saving photo spots

Explore the Prototype

Let's dive into the PROCESS

Using GV Design Sprint to achieve this solution

DAY 1: MAP

Which points do we try to solve?

Our goal at GramCity is to help people find the best Instagram-worthy spots in every city. And a possible solution needed to be created and tested quickly.

But first, how do we know these are problems? Which points do we try to solve?

Synthesizing Research

Based on the research highlights I received from the GramCity, I found that

“More than taking good photos, quickly discovering great photo spots was the most challenging part.”

Persona

DEFINE THE PROBLEM

How might we help users locate & plan out good photo spots easily and quickly?

End-to-end user map

I mapped out the possible customer experience based on two personas GramCity provided: Nick and Sara.

MVP of this solution would achieve two goals:

Finding photo ops in a specific area
Get inspired by other's photos and save them for later

DAY 2: SKETCH

What might this feature look like?

Lightning demos

Conduct a short research session to create Lightning Demos.

Take a browsed the internet, and I found inspiration from Explorest, Fotospot, All Trails, Google Maps, and Airbnb.
These 5 apps have features that support their users in a similar way that can be helpful to our users' needs:

Crazy 8’s

How might this particular feature look?

The solution sketch

I created a three-panel board that included the screen before and after the one that I chose.

DAY 3+4: DECIDE + PROTOTYPE

What is an appropriate solution?

To understand each step 2 primary users would take, I sketched two storyboards of the entire process. Following that, I built prototypes based on the storyboards.

01 Nick in Austin

02 Sarah will visit Austin

Explore the Prototype

DAY 5: TESTING

Uncover usability issues

What am I testing for?

Can participants find a good nearby spot to take photos?
Can they discover new photo-ops quickly and save them for their next trip?
Do they enjoy community engagement?
Will participants use this new feature on future trips?

Key finding

Overall, the feedback was very positive! Only then do a few UI changes come about:

01 A larger add button

02 A location name on a map

New insight

Does this feature work or not?

In this case, the idea wasn't a failure. This feature might be helpful only to people who enjoy casually taking photos and posting them on social media. Two things to keep in mind when developing this feature in the future:

Narrow our target audience.
Ensure not to include any locations too spooky or sensitive to human impact.

What I learned

Learning how to develop and test ideas quickly

The GV Design Sprint is a very efficient way to create ideas and test them within a short time. This project allowed me to evaluate my skills and forced me to develop solutions within 5 days.

Learning about what it means to make an MVP

It was important for the GV design sprint framework to focus on the user's goals. I had to determine whether distinct components were required instead of just helpful in the ideation stage.