4Privacy: Mobile App Creation
Design a private, automated storage app for a startup company
Role - Head of UX Design & Research
Interaction prototypesCreate/maintain company design libraryBi-weekly user research (quant/qual)Full product UX flows & design directionEstablish a solid information architectureCollaborate/coordinate with 3rd party design vendors
Responsibilities
Overall - Understand and implement user needs for the app while adhering to industry standards
User Engagement - Follow user cognitive models of main stream storage apps and still provide unique features
User Satisfaction - Ensure that users can utilize file input and sharing intuitively leading to increased ROI
Design Development - Comply with iOS and Android standards and best practices
Success Metrics
01 - Product Background
Founders identified the need to better secure and store information on a private platform without selling or collecting user data like large corporations (Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc). With the 3rd largest software Kickstarter, backing was gained that provided a substantial user base looking for a secure storage platform. The goal was to discover and design towards user needs and their cognitive understand of storing their information and the way they share it. This was done on iOS and Android while also providing a desktop experience.
02 - Product Transformation
What problem are we solving?
Companies are trying to create a more secure place for information storage, but most still collect and sell user data. 4Privacy’s unique requirements of no data collection adds a new design challenge. How can we provide a professional-level experience with storing and sharing information into an app on mobile and desktop but do so with limited user data to help with insight into user needs & future possibilities?
How we accomplished it.
We had to develop new methods of understanding the users and ways to engage with them outside of normal methods (like email). The ability to share with others was a central point of how we would improve engagement with users and increase market saturation. We had to carefully build it to flow easily and remain secure.
We also made the transfer of design work from Sketch/Zeplin to Figma to allow more mainstream flow of mockups to prototype resulting in much less time between iterations. It also improved the developments handoff of assets.
03 - Product Progression
The first round of designs came from an older version which was a B2B model and gave some insight but most of it had to be scrapped because of the wrong user base. The developers were also creating an entirely new version which allowed us to have more say in what could actually happen with the designs. Though the process we learned that the ability to chat securely with others was a saturated market. Users most significant confusion was with showing a distinction between what is and isn’t shared and became the biggest focus for us.
04 - Final Product
After continual research and many iterations, we flushed out the majority of issues and difficulties we found with secure sharing and “zero-knowledge” programming. This brought about the understanding of users true needs and what they gravitated to with their natural instincts.