Creating a streamlined process to help users populate their lists
SUMMARY
What was the problem we were trying to solve?
The shared lists feature was launched in the web version of Pocket, and data revealed a concerning trend: most users had empty lists or lists with only one item. To take advantage of this feature’s full potential, users needed to have at least 3-5 items on a list.
My role
Product Design Lead for Mobile, working closely with the Android team. Tasks: user journey storyboard, user testing, design, prototypes, stakeholder management.
Challenges
The main challenge was improving the flow on mobile while keeping the experience consistent with the web. The web flow was live but had many friction points, which could explain the low number of items being included by users in a given list. The proposed user experience for Android mobile (my team) needed to align with the web (another team). To solve this challenge, I connected weekly with the web team designer to update him on progress so the web team was up to speed and could take action as plans for mobile improvement evolved.
Outcomes
• Successfully aligned Android engineer and PM on the core experience by producing a storyboard artifact that layered various data points while keeping the user experience front and center.
• Successfully got buy-in from the web team designer for the proposed solution since they were part of the initial discussion for feedback and also in the loop due to weekly sync.
• Designed 7 different wireframes that showcased various ways to solve the problem as well as various ways we could balance saved individual items with lists.
• Run user testing sessions and analyzed the data, which informed our final mockups.
• Delivered a final, interactive mockup that was highly aligned with the PM and Android engineer since they were involved in the design process from the very early stages.
Problem Statement
We launched the shared lists feature in Pocket web and after a few weeks of release we were seeing a concerning trend in which the majority of users had empty lists or lists with only one item.
In order to make sure items were added to the lists users have just created, my solution was to include the step of populating the list during the flow of creating it. This project was complex because there were multiple ways in which a list could be created. On top of that, we had plans to make them collaborative in the future, which added another layer of difficulty.
Process
To capture this complexity, I talked to different stakeholders to collect data points which informed the creation of a detailed user journey. I storyboarded the key moments of the user journey and layered the qualitative data we had on top of it (user requests from support, data from dogfooding, the vision stakeholders had mentioned in internal documents, data from PRD and others).
My goal was to keep the user experience front and center so we would focus on the way users felt during the experience and at the same time considering the company’s goals. This high level artifact helped to align stakeholders in a shared vision and also supported buy-in by grounding the user experience in both data and the features requested by the product manager.
Following that, I developed wireframes and collected feedback from multiple stakeholders, including engineers and the product manager.
I then ran the user testing sessions and analyzed the data with the product manager, we refined the ideas and I created the final high-fidelity mockups and prototypes.
Demo
Conclusion
While the project didn’t come to fruition, it provided me with many valuable lessons. The most significant insight is the immense value that user journey storyboards bring to complex projects.