Overview
Introduction
In order to help me get my foot in the door for a UX Design job or internship, I embarked on a Product-Strategy-Focused UX Case Study that explored how Pocket could be improved and how the Save-for-Later problem could be solved in general.
For reference, Pocket is a cross-platform Save-for-Later app. It allows you to save web content for later, like online articles and videos.
Key Goal
I wanted to validate two problems that I had encountered whilst using Pocket and present possible solutions that had been informed by user research and user testing data.
What I Did
For this research project, I planned and executed all of the user research efforts for this independent project.
This included the following: research planning, remote user interviews, surveys, and data analysis.
Both current and ex-users of Pocket were targeted for this study.
| Participant Type | # |
|---|---|
| User Interview | 17 (12 current / 5 ex) |
| Survey | 6 (3 current / 3 ex) |
Ultimately, I asked both types of participants 60+ questions.
The Process (Part 1 of 2)
Getting Started
I first started this project by identifying a general goal and putting a general plan together.
Based on what I learned after reading The User’s Journey: Storymapping Products that People Love, I decided to begin with deciphering Pocket’s concept story. In the aforementioned book, a concept story is described as an outline of how a user thinks about a product.
Here is an outline of my original game plan:
General Goal: Figure out what would make Pocket have a more compelling story so that it converts more users into paying customers
Step 1
- Decipher Pocket’s Concept Story
- Design a Compelling Concept Story that would cause users to upgrade to Pocket’s Premium plan
- Conduct user interviews and analyze the results to check the validity of both of the aforementioned concept stories
Step 2
- Recreate mockups and create a prototype with the information gained from the user interviews
- Design a new premium package landing page
- Conduct user testing sessions to validate the updated designs and the premium package page design (including some buy-in questions)
Step 3
- Prepare to write up a Medium article to report my findings
Deciphering Pocket’s Concept Story
Since I had been a long-time user of Pocket, I started by drafting up its original concept story. I then dug into its backstory in order to make sure that everything was correct.
For reference, Pocket originally got it start as a web app / browser extension for Mozilla Firefox and then it added apps for iOS and Android. It was originally called Read It Later. Based on this fact, here’s Read It Later’s concept story:
Digging Deeper
After completing Read It Later’s concept story, I wanted to dig deeper into Pocket’s end-to-end experience. So, I took two other tools from that book, i.e. a origin story and a usage story. They both are broken up into 7 parts, like the concept story.
Here’s an overview of what they both entail:
Origin Story: Describes how users learn about a product/feature and why and how they will use it for their own purposes (this story isn’t shown)
Usage Story: Describes how users experience a product or feature
By using the usage story, I was able to visualize one of the core issues that I have with Pocket.
Crafting a Compelling Concept Story
For reference, here are the two core issues that I jotted down when I started to work on this project:
-
It isn’t straightforward when it comes to finding an article that I would like to read. I don’t want to go through the process of selecting a specific tag.
-
I feel disheartened in the fact that it doesn’t feel like I’m making progress in reading all of the articles that I have saved.
With these two issues in hand, I created a concept story that solves these two issues and would compel me to become a premium member.
The Process (Part 2 of 2)
Preparing to Conduct User Interviews
After constructing the aforementioned concept story, I then started to brainstorm and draft up interview questions for current and ex-users of Pocket.
Now, I did want to get some feedback for some of the buy-in questions that I put together and how I was executing my case study in general. I decided to use OfficeHours, which allowed me to connect with and get some feedback and advice from a UX practitioner.
Besides getting some good feedback, the biggest takeway was the need to explain the thought process that led to my case study’s high-level learning objectives.
Finalizing and then Getting to Work
Now, before my session with Danielle, I hadn’t explicitly defined high-level learning objectives for my case study. I knew what I wanted to look into, but it made sense to define these officially. So, after learning more about them via multiple articles, I was able to formulate four of them.
I then put my non-demographic questions into buckets, which were each tied to an individual high-level learning objective. I then formulated more questions that I thought were relevant. I also edited some of my pre-existing questions and added two questions about a user’s most recent positive / negative experience while using Pocket based on the advice that I received from Danielle.
The Outcome
Something became apparent…
While I was conducting user interviews, it became more and more apparent that both current and ex users were running into the same two issues that I was experiencing or found value in the solutions that I had proposed to them.
So, instead of completing the case study and reporting my findings to the world, I decided to compete against Pocket.
I was able to recruit two friends of mine who also graduated with a degree in Software Engineering from University of California, Irvine, and we decided to compete in a competition called 59DaysofCode, which is a 59-day long hackathon in my hometown of Fresno.
59DaysofCode 2018
During the competition, I served as the project lead, product designer, and co-developer of the resulting mobile application. We called it Korey and it was a Save-for-Later and digital media aggregator app.
We came in 2nd! (Awarded $250)
During the showcase, I walked people through a functional MVP that was running on a iPhone simulator and displayed on a vertical PC monitor. My teammates and I also walked people through a fuller-featured prototype that I created using InVision. The feedback was fairly positive.
