App Overview
VSCO is a photo editing and photo sharing platform. Unlike other photo sharing platforms, VSCO focuses more on the content and less on the social aspect. VSCO’s visual language is minimal and simplistic, in a way mimicking a virtual museum.
Noticeable Issues
Many users of VSCO critique that their extreme take on minimalism makes usability and learnability difficult. Many of the icons used in the app are not universal and lack text explaining each button’s functions.
Additionally, many complain about the confusing navigation organization. Some features are hidden and difficult to locate.
Our Focus
One of the main features of VSCO is it’s photo journaling function. While exploring this function, our team had difficulty navigating through the journal making process. Our goal for this project was to redesign the flow to improve the user experience and create an interface that is understandable to all users.
Current Flowchart
Currently, VSCO has a long and over-complicated process of creating a journal.
The flow we propose is simpler and easier to understand to improve users’ experience with creating a journal.
Proposed Flowchart
Wireframes
According to the changes we wanted to make in the current version, we created wireframes as an initial step to help us better understand our ideas. The flow we were aiming for was a more streamlined and simple approach to aid users when they create a journal. The main changes we made were to adding a cover photo and adding text/photos.
Proposed Screens
Task 1 Create a new journal and select the first two photos.
Task 2 Name the journal “Travel Adventures.”
Proposed Screens
Task 3 Assign the first photo to be the cover photo.
Task 4 Write a caption saying “Morning Mountian Sunrise.”
Task 5 Publish the journal.
User Tests Results
We conducted 10 user tests on our initial prototype. We guided each user through the five tasks and asked them to think out loud so we could understand their thought process.
After analyzing the gathered feedback, we had learned about the common difficulties users had in interacting and understanding our prototype. We then brainstormed various solutions to solve these difficulties and create a smoother experience. We came out of testing with a few takeaways we could use to improve our product.
To avoid confusion regarding the cover photo, adding an indicator of the default cover photo must be added.
Adding affordance to indicate where users can add text will avoid confusion.
Creating a more “button-like” feature for the text styles will make it clear that different options can be selected.
When publishing journal, adding a confirmation or indicator for the process will help users better understand that the journal is published.
Solidifying the privacy button language will create a more cohesive design language.
Final Screens
According to our user research and feedback, we made changes to our screens and solved many affordance issues. We added affordance to creating a cover photo adding text, text style options, and publishing a journal. We made various things more clear including the iconography for a public/private journal and a photo and text button. Because of the addition of the option to add more photos, we created another task for it.
Task 1 Create a new journal and select the first two photos.
Task 2 Name the journal “Travel Adventures.”
Task 3 Select the second photo as the cover photo.
Task 4 Add the mountain and leaves photo as the third photo.
Task 5 Write a caption saying “Morning Mountain Sunrise.”
Task 6 Publish the journal.
Prototype Link
Group project with Gabbi Maneja