JOURNOW Mobile App
WHAT IS JOURNOW
Journow is a mobile app built to help people easily document their ideas, feelings and experiences. The goal of this app is to help users who are keenly interested in documenting key things in their lives but face certain issues when trying to document these things.
MY RESPONSIBILITY
I was responsible for in-depth research, and end-to-end design of the JourNow mobile application.
Problems PEOPLE FACE WITH CURRENT JOURNALING
People regularly have an issue with conveying their thoughts and emotions into text especially when it’s a personal situation and they find it easier to speak their thoughts and ideas so that it captures every of their emotions and how they feel.
❗ ️They may not have a specific book for it
❗️ They may loose their book for jotting it
❗️ They may not always have access to their journal
❗️ They may not be able to convey all their thoughts and emotions into text probably because they want to obey writing principles(or just being formal)
RESEARCH
I conducted a survey with the ideal target audience of the product to find out their pain points which made me better understand the ideal users of this product.
Asides the problems I already preconcieved, I found out some other problems that could be solved with this product. The result of survey is in the images below.
From the research, I was able to gather some of the following insights:
💡 Some users needed reminders to document their ideas, thoughts and experiences
💡 Asides from being able to write things down, some users needed a kind of sketch pad for them to be able to scribble their thoughts and present them in sketches
💡 Users want to be able to express their feelings (either in words or using some other means)
💡 Privacy is important for some users, so they want to be able to document without anyone invading their personal documentations
💡 Some users already use note apps on their phone for this but it is ineffective.
💡 Most users are comfortable with technology as long as it’s easy to use and understand
User Personas
Based on the user research conducted and the insights generated, we created user personas that captured the essence of the ideal users of this product. This helps in creating personalised experiences that solves their pain points.
Brainstorming with HMW (How might we)
Upon getting clarity on the problems the product is going to solve, we brainstormed ideas of different solutions that could be used to solve these problems. The “How might we” technique was used to generate as much solutions as possible and the non-feasible solutions were discarded after. No solution was too awkward during this session. The more solutions, the better.
Competitive analysis
We conducted a competitive analysis session where our product (JourNow) was compared with other similar products in the market and we highlighted some things we could do with our product that would gives us an edge over the competitors. It was while brainstorming ideas on this that we came up with a unique feature - The memories feature that brings to rememberance, a user’s previous journals and highlights other journals that had pretty much, similar feelings as that journal.
User journey map
The user journey map highlights the process of a user using the product from the discovery phase to using the product and obtaining delight from using the product. It could also include conversion and advocacy of the product
Card sorting
Card sorting was done with 3 potential users to ensure that content and features were displayed the way users would want to see them
User flow
The user flow was created to show how the users will use the product from signup to achieving different tasks on the product..
Low -Fidelity wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframes were used to iterate on Interface ideas. I came up with 2 ideas for the interface but concluded on one. This also helped speed up the high-fidelity mockups
Style Guide
We created the style guide. This helped for speed and consistency during the interface designs. Typeface, colors, shadows, and components were created.
Typeface - Graphik
Onboarding screens
The onboarding screens guides the users and visitors through quick slides that explains some key features of the app and the experience they should expect when using it
HOME screens
The home screen highlights all the documentations that has been made by the user (if any). This can be displayed in list or grid view.
💡 The user can search for any specific files created and also filter it .
💡 The user can also select one or multiple files created in which the following actions can be performed on it:
Lock
Share
Duplicate
Delete
Export
On this screen, the user can click on the “+” button to create new category or new file
Create file
Create new file allows the user to create a blank file where they can document new things (ideas, thoughts, experiences, etc).
This section allows users to speak to the app while it converts their speach to text. It also has other features such as:
Uploading images from their phone
Surfing images online
Emotion detection (AI)
File sharing
Text editor
Freehand sketch etc.
Overview
The “Overview” section highlights overall activities on the app. It conains different sections like:
Analytics; displaying activities
Categories; showing all categories created
Shared with; shows all people that have been shared one file or another
Saved audio;
Images
Other Screens
These are the rest of the screens created to help users achieve different tasks within the app
LEARNING
During the Journow project, I discovered that open-ended questions in research lead to richer insights, helping to better understand the problem. Clear communication was essential in getting the best results from the team. We also found that working remotely affected our productivity, but by improving our agile process, we improved our process and completed the product successfully.
