Objective
Work in a team of three to add a new feature within a 2 week sprint onto Google Photos that would add value to its user base.
My Roll
Project Manager, Researcher, Interaction Designer and Visual Designer
Conducted competitive analysis and industry research
Created online surveys and analyzed results
Conducted usability testing
Created User Flow
Built Wireframes
Did mockup for high fidelity wireframes
Tools of the Trade
Pen & Paper
Google Forms
Sketch
InVision
The Problem The Solution
We wanted to add a feature onto the existing Google Photos application that would allow users to print photos from their phones onto different mediums.
Google Photos is a great platform for this feature due to the amount of people who already have Google Photos and the trust that they have for the company.
Google Photos does not currently have an E-commerce print feature that allows users to print anything except for photo albums. Without this feature their users are forced to go elsewhere for heart felt mementos, pictures and gifts such as Shutterfly or Amazon Photos, causing a loss of potential revenue and unsatisfied users.
Before we began we had to ask a few questions.
How do we create a user friendly platform that will allow users to print their pictures?
How can we compete with other companies on the market that already have a similar service?
Research
Process
Our research began with an online survey to help us identify our Google Photos users and see which platform would be best suited to build our new feature on.
SurveY Breakdown
Survey Results: 34 respondents of these 22 used ios devices and 12 used Android
ios users who used Google Photos: 15%
Android users who used Google Photos: 100%
Based on our survey results, we found that only 44% of our respondents had used a photo service to print a picture off of their phones.
However we also found that 88% of our users said that if this feature was added to their preferred photo application they would want to use it.
We used the results that we received from the survey to help craft our user persona.
We then conducted a competitive analysis that allowed us compare both direct and indirect competitors to Google Photos. We used this research to see how others in the market were making their printing feature work.
After reviewing our competitors we decided to base some of our processes on their concepts that have already been proven to work. We looked into their layouts and made changes and adjustments to stick with Googles style guide.
My team and I wanted to make the process seem familiar to anyone who may have used the competitors process while still keeping it uniquely Google. Based off of this flow we each sketched out what we thought the process would look like.
Wireframes
Once we decided on the basic sketches to use for our process we began to create wireframes in Sketch. We wanted to make sure we had something that we were able to test with that would allow us to uncover anything that we may be missing in our process.
Usability Testing
Now that we had finished making the wireframes, I took what we had created and turned them into a functioning prototype using InVision. One of my team members came up with a script and scenario that we would all be using to test our users with over the weekend to ensure we were all asking similar questions.
I was able to interview 4 people in the designated time with a grand total of 9 users between the three of us. Based off of the feedback we received we began to make iterations to the initial design and add in additional paths for users to complete their journey.
User feedback
Things to keep
Design was simple and easy to follow.
Functionality was reminiscent of other online shopping experiences.
Things to change
Questions on the purpose of several icons.
Confusing wording made it difficult for users to figure out what to do.
Continuity on several screens, mismatching information.
Iterations
Below you will find images depicting the changes that we had made to several of the screens throughout our design process.
Images starting from the far left depict the sketch, initial wireframe, wireframe(after usability testing) and high fidelity.
