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.
My Part in the Plot
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
My Part in the Plot
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
Turn the Competition Into Your Backstory
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
Step Into Their Stories
I interviewed four amateur writers (writers of stories, poems, plays, songs, blogs, articles, etc.) Their writing experiences varied, from casual writers, wanting to publish, to one with a professional writing career.
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:
Staying motivated, sharing with others was main motivation
Working with others helped others to enjoy writing more and to stay more on track
Finding other writers to give them 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
Forum for asking writing related 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.
Step Into Their Stories
I interviewed four amateur writers (writers of stories, poems, plays, songs, blogs, articles, etc.) Their writing experiences varied, from casual writers, wanting to publish, to one with a professional writing career.
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:
Staying motivated, sharing with others was main motivation
Working with others helped others to enjoy writing more and to stay more on track
Finding other writers to give them 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
Forum for asking writing related 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.
Define
Wrestling With Motivation, One Page at a Time
Your Stories, Our Mission
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 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
Design Choices That Drive the User Story
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
Design Choices That Drive the User Story
I conducted moderated user testing over Zoom video calls with the same users.
The signing up flow: making an account, choosing preferences for the types of writing projects
Giving another user feedback on their writing project
User posting their own writing project
Checking messages
Polishing the Pages
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 (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 conducted moderated user testing over Zoom video calls with the same users.
The signing up flow: making an account, choosing preferences for the types of writing projects
Giving another user feedback on their writing project
User posting their own writing project
Checking messages
Design Choices That Drive the User Story
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:
Users thoughts on:
Overall app:
Thought the purpose of the app was a great idea
Easy to understand flows
Design:
Loved the cat and keyboard theme
Loved the warm bookish colors
Simple layout
Loved the cat genre icons made by Figma pen tool
Posting and giving feedback:
Liked having cover images for stories
Loved having ability to choose cover image with AI
Liked being able to choose preferences for writing projects
Community:
Loved being able to friend other writers, and send messages
Liked forum for asking others questions
Here is the Cat Board:
Users thoughts on:
Overall app:
Thought the purpose of the app was a great idea
Easy to understand flows
Design:
Loved the cat and keyboard theme
Loved the warm bookish colors
Simple layout
Loved the cat genre icons made by Figma pen tool
Posting and giving feedback:
Liked having cover images for stories
Loved having ability to choose cover image with AI
Liked being able to choose preferences for writing projects
Community:
Loved being able to friend other writers, and send messages
Liked forum for asking others questions
Conclusion
Every Story Needs a Purpose
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.
Every Story Needs a Purpose
Conclusion
Here is the Cat Board:
Final Product
Users thoughts on:
Overall app:
Thought the purpose of the app was a great idea
Easy to understand flows
Design:
Loved the cat and keyboard theme
Loved the warm bookish colors
Simple layout
Loved the cat genre icons made by Figma pen tool
Posting and giving feedback:
Liked having cover images for stories
Loved having ability to choose cover image with AI
Liked being able to choose preferences for writing projects
Community:
Loved being able to friend other writers, and send messages
Liked forum for asking others questions
Conclusion
Every Story Needs a Purpose
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
Design Choices That Drive the User Story
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
Wrestling With Motivation, One Page at a Time
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.
Your Stories, Our Mission
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 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.
Testing
Design Choices That Drive the User Story
I conducted moderated user testing over Zoom video calls with the same users.
The signing up flow: making an account, choosing preferences for the types of writing projects
Giving another user feedback on their writing project
User posting their own writing project
Checking messages
Polishing the Pages
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 (imessages 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 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.