Planning the Product
One of the most crucial steps in creating a worthwhile product is planning. It’s essential to know what you want users to do, the process to get to your main features, and the problems users can run into on their way there.
When redesigning the EarthCam app, these were some of the core aspects that I had to design in order to create a functional user flow.
I first started by mapping out the original information architecture (IA) of the app. Instantly there is one pretty big problem, there is just no connection between the individual pages and any other part of the app. This causes everything to feel so isolated and the app to be unintuitive to the average user. Features like the map, which allow the users to explore the cameras in a more interactive way, are hidden within the settings instead of somewhere on the homepage.
The new IA addresses many of these problems and expands upon already present features to make them more appealing to a mobile client. Bringing forward the map functionality alongside the list view so that viewers can easily switch between the two can greatly help when people are just exploring. Bringing in the ability to add friends to the app can also increase sharing between users, as well as increase usage of features like the Hall of Fame and adding likes to cameras.
These features are able to bring the app together, having new ways to navigate and find what you’re looking for, while also giving users more options to make the app their own.
In order to make sure that users are able to utilize the features, we have to create user flows to identify the paths that people would take to do a certain task. Below are the five user flows identified for the project.
User Flow 1: Navigate to find a Camera in Barcelona.
User Flow 2: The user likes a camera and returns to it through their liked camera list.
User Flow 3: The user adds a clip to the Hall of Fame and navigates to watch other clips.
User Flow 4: Users can navigate to book a hotel at the location of a camera
User Flow 5: Users can add friends and look at their favorite cameras and clips
These flows show the various ways users can use the app, and can give me as a designer an idea of what needs to be fleshed out and connected, especially going into the prototyping phase of the project.