context
thinkin’ is a social mobile application that has been created from scratch, with a team made of a sociologist and a developer.
The challenge was the following: how can we offer users a way to communicate differently than on other social media platforms?
design process
We spent time sketching on paper alternatives to common tools offered by social media platforms to communicate. We ended up with a couple of possible scenarios. After running questionnaires in places such as coffee shops, questioning random peoples that could become users, and establishing an assumption around one particular scenario that we though could work, we went to create the features and shaped them as wireframes. We finally ended up with a beta version.
Good enough to be shown to the public, we went for testing that version live. I had fun doing guerilla testing in coffee shops in Paris, asking people to install the app and to onboard. I would pay close attention to which actions they would perform and the understanding they had facing the user interface. Direct contact with users is a great way to see what works or not, bringing the experience face to face with the reality, and come back to our desk to improve or pivot if necessary.
We’ve used Google analytics (with Firebase and Firestore as database) to get data and work around them, in order to maintain and increase users retention. We did A/B testings and metrics checks to increase users satisfaction and retention. We tried new features but data told that users were not using them as expected. We had to come back to our desks and reflect and do changes accordingly. Some critical screens were discarded by users so we had to modify the experience and the UI in order to better guide them. After release of V.1, we also asked users via an internal messaging service bunch of questions in order to get insights and improve the application, to make sure it aligns with users expectations.
outcome
