Fokus is a photo editing app that empowers users to transform their images into standout visuals for Instagram and other social platforms.

Overview

This case study explores how expanding the app’s core editing tools with geolocation functionality can inspire creativity—helping users discover the most picturesque locations near them and guiding their journey from capture, to edit to share.

Role:

Product Designer.

Process:

GV Design Sprint

Tools:

Figma, Principle, Adobe Analytics

Duration:

4 Weeks

Process

We adopted a 5 day GV Design Sprint to prototype design ideas and test them rapidly to come up with key MVP functionalities and features.

Define and understand the project scope

Lightening Demos & Sketches to create ideas

Discuss and Decide on the most interesting solutions

Translating ideas into interactive prototpes

Usability Testing

DAY 1: UNDERSTANDING

Analyzed existing company research and two primary personas to build a clear understanding of the problem space, user needs, and pain points.

Location, Location, Location.......

Through the preliminary research, it was discovered that most users do have a vague idea of the type of photo they want to shoot, but are having a hard time finding the information ready at hand regarding their desired photo location.

So, how might we extend FOKUS beyond photo editing to guide Zoe and Thomas toward the most picturesque locations nearby, making the journey from capture and edit to share more seamless and inspiring?

DAY 2 & 3: SKETCHING & SOLUTIONING

User flow sketches to map out step-by-step interaction with the product in order to spot pain points and identify opportunities to create new and improved user experiences.

A deep analysis of direct and indirect competitors related to FOKUS’s vision, to examine what kinds of solutions already exist and what we can improve on. This helped identify gaps in the market and opportunities to differentiate FOKUS with unique, value-driven features

FOTOSPOT

DAY 4: PROTOTYPING

The Catagory Screen is meant to take the user to the information they need swiftly and quickly. The categories that will be featured on this screen, will be the key differentiator of FOKUS from its competitor apps.

Speed & Ease of Use

Finding the right unicorn photo to shoot and being able to share that experience have equal importance in the overall goal of these apps. The focus should therefore be on niche location search for various User needs. Speed and ease of use should also be essential. So it goes back to the importance of location, location, location.

Searching and finding the desired photo location.

User searching for their desired photo location.

User Flow: Searching and finding the desired photo location.

DAY 5: USABILITY TESTING

I carried out usability testing on 5 individuals who have an interest in social media photo sharing. The main takeaway was that the Home Screen threw off more than half of the participants. They were not sure why they were seeing the Most Popular locations screen as the first main screen of the app. Categories Page felt most important and primary and Most Popular felt secondary.

So we made the tweak.

The Category page became the Homepage and a CTA was added on the Catagory
screen to link to the Most Popular screen.

TAKEAWAYS

Carrying out this design sprint for an existing product facilitated the high-velocity delivery of solutions to the problem space. Being able to test out the User Flow solution really quickly from the conception phase enabled the designer to validate a hypothesis about the design solution without allocating too much time and resources to it.

Also, it became more apparent that customization is key in optimizing the experience of the User's journey through the product. Geo-location is one method of tailoring experiences for each user to meet their needs.

NEXT STEPS

The next step is to make the above changes to the prototype and if it is within the overall project plan, to retest the second iteration on the Users. Features to include in the next sprint:

Edge Case User Flow scenarios where User can't find the location or category etc.
User Profile Page
Personal Gallery
Social Media Feed
Photo Editing features