CHLOE WU
The Challenge
Your Story is the largest media platform in India designed for startups and entrepreneurs to exchange ideas and visions. The website and mobile app provide their user with the latest startup company news and entrepreneur’s experiences in mainly articles and videos.
Despite having a large user base and a high viewing rate for the website, the mobile application is not as widely used as expected. Therefore, the company aims to increase its mobile app usage by redesigning the app. The goals for this redesigning project are:
Increase the stickiness
of their app users, ideally to make the app reading a habit-forming activity
Video first:
during the pandemic, there has been an increase in video consumption, so the client wants to promote their video content further.
My Role
I collaborated with two other designers and worked intensively for 4 weeks. We were to provide two complete redesign variants for the YourStory app. My two teammates were designing the articles, profile and onboarding sections. My role was to redesign the video section.
The Process
Discover
Define
Develop
Deliver
SECONDARY RESEARCH
USER REVIEWS
To better discover the reasons for having a low user stickiness, I started with secondary research. Here are a few user reviews from the Google Play App Store.
WEBSITE ANALYTICS DATA
Despite the large number of page views contributed by non-logged-in users, logged-in users seem to be more committed to the website content.
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This data also corresponds with the fact that most page views are from social media and organic search, which are often contributed by non-logged-in users.
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USER INTERVIEW
YourStory connected us with 10 of their current users, who are based in India. We had a one-on-one in-depth interview with them. I personally interviewed 2 users (video recording and interview notes can be found here).
The interviewees are a mixed group of website and app users.
Navigation
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Navigation is complicated users are often overwhelmed by a large amount of information on one screen
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Users suggest having content divided by industries or topics
Personalization
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There is no personalized content, and it takes longer to navigate to the desired content
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Some users are curious about what other people are reading
Notification
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There is no personalized notification, and too many notifications can be distracting
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There is no notification for live streaming
Recommendation
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Some users mentionthat they are curious about what other people are reading
App Downloading
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Some users downloaded the app but hardly ever used it
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One user did not know the app existed
Video vs Article
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Some users mention that they are curious about what other people are reading
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Because of the recent lockdown amid the pandemic, users started to watch more videos and live streaming sessions on their computer
USERS X USAGE
Behavioural Patterns are identified from the interview results.
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Users needs are related to their current career and life goals. There are 3 major patterns. Detailed explanations will be in the Persona section.
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App users: they often experienced navigation issues, especially with the videos
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Non-app users: some of them previously downloaded the app, but never used them. It indicates that the app does not offer them the incentives to make users stick to it.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I initially wanted to compare YourStory with its direct competitors - tech news platforms such as The Ken and TechCrunch, as my teammates did for the article sections. However, I later realized the video’s design should be compared to a different set of apps, and they should be:
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News platforms with both articles and videos
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Video platforms have a strong user base and large market size
So I picked Google news app, CNN news app, Youtube and Daily motion.
PERSONA
Three different personas are developed based on the users' life goals, what the users take out from YourStory and their daily schedules.
JOURNEY MAPPING
REASONS BEHIND LOW DOWNLOADING RATE
Drewing a journey map helped me visualized the blockage to using the app
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While landing on YourStory website, users should be informed and encouraged to download their app
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Some users might not feel like using the app because it does not offer anything extra than the mobile web version. Therefore, it is vitally important to add personalization features to the app to distinguish it from the mobile website.
The website homepage looks almost identical to the app home page
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
One of the biggest challenges during design is how might we arrange the content in a better way, given the multiple dimensions of classifications.
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Article feeds categorized by article brands name
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Video feeds categorized by video series name
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Articles and videos categorized by topics
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Articles and videos categorized by industries
Therefore we have rearranged the content, a new site map is shown below. The blue pages are the ones that we added.
I managed to maximize the personalized experience, and also keep the sub-brands as original as they are, as the client required.
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LOW-FI WIREFRAME
Our main strategies for redesigning the app is to have:
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Personalized content display
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Personalized content recommendations
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Better navigation
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Personalized in-app notifications
In order to balance personalization and sub-brands/video series, I added a personalized page full of tailored video feeds for that particular user and a page of trending and featured video feeds for all users, in addition to their existing categorizations of sub-brands/ video series.
Video Home Redesign
Before
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After
Video Page Redesign
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Before
After
In-App Notification
USABILITY TESTING AND ITERATION
YourStory connected us with 3 users for prototype usability testing. Users were asked to browse pages of videos and give feedback on the elements. We also observe the users how they navigate the complete certain tasks. Testing script and notes can be found here.
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For exiting the video window, we tested 2 options. Option 1 is the current app's "back button" and Option 2 is "minimizing the video window".
Users prefer Option 2 and prefer to have the minimized video keep playing because users can browse other videos while still listening to the minimized video.
CLIENT'S FEEDBACK
We loved the user research process, the insights on users and the manner in which everything was documented and managed so seamlessly. We'll be working towards incorporating some of these as best practices
K. BK, Cheif Product Manager at YourStory
WHAT I'VE LEARNT AS A RESEARCHER AND DESIGNER
Keep fine-tuning the research questions or directions during the process:
Initially, I thought I found the direction of the main cause of the app's lack of usage, however later I realized while analyzing the research results, that I could dig deeper or further about the real issues.
You continue to understand the users throughout the designing process.
The empathizing stage is "never ended". This continuous understanding could inspire you to think of a better solution in an unexpected way.