Intro
What is Cat Board?
Cat Board is an end to end app where amateur writers can post their writing projects for feedback, they can give feedback on others work as well. Users can also connect with other writers through our community feature.
When writers try to bring their stories to life they face so many struggles, Cat Board aims to discover and knock down these roadblocks.
Cat Board is an end to end app where amateur writers can post their writing projects for feedback, they can give feedback on others work as well. Users can also connect with other writers through our community feature.
When writers try to bring their stories to life they face so many struggles, Cat Board aims to discover and knock down these roadblocks.
What was my role?
My Role:
Interviews and research
Analyze
End-to-end design
User testing
Final project deliverables
Tools and Resources:
Sketchbook and paper
Zoom and Maze
Figma
Group critiques
Mentor sessions
What is Cat Board?
Cat Board is an end to end app where amateur writers can post their writing projects for feedback, they can give feedback on others work as well. Users can also connect with other writers through our community feature.
When writers try to bring their stories to life they face so many struggles, Cat Board aims to discover and knock down these roadblocks.
Intro
What was my role?
My Role:
Interviews and research
Analyze
End-to-end design
User testing
Final project deliverables
Tools and Resources:
Sketchbook and paper
Zoom and Maze
Figma
Group critiques
Mentor sessions
My Role:
Interviews and research
Analyze
End-to-end design
User testing
Final project deliverables
My Role:
Interviews and research
Analyze
End-to-end design
User testing
Final project deliverables
Tools and Resources:
Sketchbook and paper
Zoom and Maze
Figma
Group critiques
Mentor sessions
Research
Competitor Analysis:
I viewed four competitors: Scribophile, Critique Circle, qtCircle, and WriteSeen
Strengths:
The use of a point system to motivate users to give others feedback on their writing projects
Ability to choose preferences of writing projects would prefer to give feedback on
Pen name
Simplistic layouts
Weaknesses:
Point system taken advantage of
Scribophile takes a while to learn, not intuitive
Lack of personality
Research
Interviews:
I interviewed four amateur writers (writers of stories, poems, plays, songs, blogs, articles, etc.) Their skill levels and writing preferences varied widely, from casual writers, writers wanting to publish, to one with professionally written historical articles.
Despite having a wide variety of users who wrote, their difficulties were the same.
Having a community helped my users overcome many problems, such as:
Having a community helped my interviewees to stay motivated (sharing their stories with others was many of my users motivation for writing)
Working with others helped others to enjoy writing more and to stay more on track
Helped when finding other writers to give my users feedback on their work, helped them to stay accountable, and to encourage them to continue with their writing
Seeing others share their writing projects helped with confidence when sharing their own projects
They the thought of having a forum where they can ask other writers questions
Making time to write was another big difficulty. It isn't possible for me to make more time in my users daily life, so it would be very important that my app was easy to learn and use.
All of my interviewees liked being able to upload pictures with their writing projects. This is not something I had even considered until after the interviews, showing that this is a feature that could make my app more appealing to my users.
Interviews:
I interviewed four amateur writers (writers of stories, poems, plays, songs, blogs, articles, etc.) Their skill levels and writing preferences varied widely, from casual writers, writers wanting to publish, to one with professionally written historical articles.
Despite having a wide variety of users who wrote, their difficulties were the same.
Having a community helped my users overcome many problems, such as:
Having a community helped my interviewees to stay motivated (sharing their stories with others was many of my users motivation for writing)
Working with others helped others to enjoy writing more and to stay more on track
Helped when finding other writers to give my users feedback on their work, helped them to stay accountable, and to encourage them to continue with their writing
Seeing others share their writing projects helped with confidence when sharing their own projects
They the thought of having a forum where they can ask other writers questions
Making time to write was another big difficulty. It isn't possible for me to make more time in my users daily life, so it would be very important that my app was easy to learn and use.
All of my interviewees liked being able to upload pictures with their writing projects. This is not something I had even considered until after the interviews, showing that this is a feature that could make my app more appealing to my users.
Define
The main struggle was finding motivation to write:
What are Cat Board's brand values?
Supportive collaboration:
I want to ensure that users are able to connect and to communicate effectively to help each other grow as writers.
This will be shown in the community feature, with the messaging and forums, and friending people, as well as in the ability to give others feedback.
Integrity:
The second brand value builds off of supportive collaboration.
Cat Board will ensure that our users have integrity when giving others feedback. We want to ensure that our users give helpful and thoughtful reviews, so that our users will trust our app. This will hopefully be met through coming up with a point system that will hold our users accountable for writing constructive reviews.
Imaginative and Innovative:
Cat Board will have a creative unique side. This will be shown in our app's theme of cats and keyboards.
The story behind my theme was that cats like to sit on keyboards when people type. Having a cat as my motif would help my app to stick in the users minds. I based the name Cat Board, logo, and icons for the genre icons off of the theme.
I will also focus on creating an innovative idea on how to motivate users to give helpful feedback, which would put as ahead of our competition.
Inviting and Friendly:
Cat Board will have a pleasing personality that our users will hopefully find charming.
This will be shown most in the colors and other style choice, as well as the theme.
I also wanted to make sure that the fonts had an inviting feel, well still being legible.
Design
Next I designed the layouts:
Now that I knew what to focus on I sketched out the layouts of screens and the flows on paper.
Once I was satisfied I moved the sketches into Figma and made the main flows useable. I conducted unmoderated user testing to see if the flows made sense, and if there was any other pieces if feedback my users would give me. Once I received the feedback I moved from low-fidelity to high fidelity.
Testing
I tested four main task flows:
I conducted moderated user testing over Zoom video calls with the same users.
The signing up flow, this also included making an account, and choosing preferences for the types of writing projects the users would prefer to give feedback on
Giving another user feedback on their writing project
The user to post their own writing project
User to check their messages, I would also have them give me additional feedback on the overall structure of the community screen. I then moved the sketches into Figma, and made the main buttons usable.
I made some changes:
You can see three big changes in these pictures:
The first big change I made was to the bottom nav bar. Users weren’t sure whether to search under the community or notification button in nav bar to find messages from other users. I got rid of the notification button, and just made the little notification circles for each individual button in the nav bar (ie; messages from friends would have a notification circle on the community button. Feedback received on story would show notification on the my stories button.)
I added back buttons to my screens with steps, so that the user doesn't have to start over if they make a mistake.
The third big change was adding more differentiation between the secondary buttons from primary buttons.
I made some changes:
I conducted moderated user testing over Zoom video calls with the same users.
The signing up flow, this also included making an account, and choosing preferences for the types of writing projects the users would prefer to give feedback on
Giving another user feedback on their writing project
The user to post their own writing project
User to check their messages, I would also have them give me additional feedback on the overall structure of the community screen. I then moved the sketches into Figma, and made the main buttons usable.
I tested three main task flows:
Testing
The next change I made was for the cover picture for the writing projects.
Users experienced confusion on what to do next when the saw the next and continue button, they weren't sure if the buttons did the same thing. Once they realized they did, they found the buttons redundant. I got rid of the next button, and kept the continue button.
The fix to the previous problem also helped with another issue. The cover image felt too cluttered, getting rid of the next arrow helped to clean it up. I also made it so that users could like the piece once they had finished reading it.
The next big change I made was for the Feedback Summary screen, once users finished giving feedback on another user's writing project.
The first change here was to have more differentiation between the edit feedback and add feedback text fields. I made the edit feedback smaller, and the outline bolder.
The next change was adding the sentence that the user commented on above the comment, so that if they decide to edit the feedback they remember what it was for.
Final Product
Here is the Cat Board:
Here is the Cat Board:
Conclusion
Having purpose is important:
This has been my favorite project to work on so far. I enjoyed being able to work on an app with a purpose that was important to me. Writing is one of my favorite hobbies, as well as my husbands. It is a way that we connect, and I am hoping this app will help others writers connect. As well as to get closer to their dreams of getting their stories out into the world.
Something else that helped me to appreciate this project was that I felt I had grown as a designer. The confidence that I gained helped me to complete this project with less difficulties and less stress. I was able to avoid making mistakes I had made in previous projects. I had more time to make sure everything worked properly and looked visually appealing, and less time spent on headaches and problems.
Having purpose is important:
Conclusion
Testing
I conducted moderated user testing over Zoom video calls with the same users.
The signing up flow, this also included making an account, and choosing preferences for the types of writing projects the users would prefer to give feedback on
Giving another user feedback on their writing project
The user to post their own writing project
User to check their messages, I would also have them give me additional feedback on the overall structure of the community screen. I then moved the sketches into Figma, and made the main buttons usable.
I tested three main task flows:
I made some changes:
You can see three big changes in these pictures:
The first big change I made was to the bottom nav bar. Users weren’t sure whether to search under the community or notification button in nav bar to find messages from other users. I got rid of the notification button, and just made the little notification circles for each individual button in the nav bar (ie; messages from friends would have a notification circle on the community button. Feedback received on story would show notification on the my stories button.)
I added back buttons to my screens with steps, so that the user doesn't have to start over if they make a mistake.
The third big change was adding more differentiation between the secondary buttons from primary buttons.
The next big change I made was for the Feedback Summary screen, once users finished giving feedback on another user's writing project.
The first change here was to have more differentiation between the edit feedback and add feedback text fields. I made the edit feedback smaller, and the outline bolder.
The next change was adding the sentence that the user commented on above the comment, so that if they decide to edit the feedback they remember what it was for.
The next change I made was for the cover picture for the writing projects.
Users experienced confusion on what to do next when the saw the next and continue button, they weren't sure if the buttons did the same thing. Once they realized they did, they found the buttons redundant. I got rid of the next button, and kept the continue button.
The fix to the previous problem also helped with another issue. The cover image felt too cluttered, getting rid of the next arrow helped to clean it up. I also made it so that users could like the piece once they had finished reading it.
Here is the Cat Board:
Final Product
Conclusion
Having purpose is important:
This has been my favorite project to work on so far. I enjoyed being able to work on an app with a purpose that was important to me. Writing is one of my favorite hobbies, as well as my husbands. It is a way that we connect, and I am hoping this app will help others writers connect. As well as to get closer to their dreams of getting their stories out into the world.
Something else that helped me to appreciate this project was that I felt I had grown as a designer. The confidence that I gained helped me to complete this project with less difficulties and less stress. I was able to avoid making mistakes I had made in previous projects. I had more time to make sure everything worked properly and looked visually appealing, and less time spent on headaches and problems.
Design
Next I designed the layouts:
Now that I knew what to focus on I sketched out the layouts of screens and the flows on paper.
Once I was satisfied I moved the sketches into Figma and made the main flows useable. I conducted unmoderated user testing to see if the flows made sense, and if there was any other pieces if feedback my users would give me. Once I received the feedback I moved from low-fidelity to high fidelity.
Define
The main struggle was finding motivation to write:
Supportive collaboration:
I want to ensure that users are able to connect and to communicate effectively to help each other grow as writers.
This will be shown in the community feature, with the messaging and forums, and friending people, as well as in the ability to give others feedback.
What are Cat Board's brand values?
Integrity:
The second brand value builds off of supportive collaboration.
Cat Board will ensure that our users have integrity when giving others feedback. We want to ensure that our users give helpful and thoughtful reviews, so that our users will trust our app. This will hopefully be met through coming up with a point system that will hold our users accountable for writing constructive reviews.
Imaginative and Innovative:
Cat Board will have a creative unique side. This will be shown in our app's theme of cats and keyboards.
The story behind my theme was that cats like to sit on keyboards when people type. Having a cat as my motif would help my app to stick in the users minds. I based the name Cat Board, logo, and icons for the genre icons off of the theme.
I will also focus on creating an innovative idea on how to motivate users to give helpful feedback, which would put as ahead of our competition.
Inviting and Friendly:
Cat Board will have a pleasing personality that our users will hopefully find charming.
This will be shown most in the colors and other style choice, as well as the theme.
I also wanted to make sure that the fonts had an inviting feel, well still being legible.