Iris Lee

Story

I had the pleasure to work with the startup app company during the fall quarter. They're redefining the way we create and send out multimedia ads from a single mobile app, competing with companies like MailChimp and Vertical Response. It's advertised to take less than five minutes to create and mass-promote a single media advertisement, and targeted small business owners as well as universities and public/private schools.  Pretty useful stuff. 

Process

Since it was still a pretty new app, I was able to participate in the visual and interactive re-design. I conducted user research on the college audience to provide feedback, made mockups, and worked on new app workflows/transitions. It was a solid experience for me, as I had a lot more freedom to work. 

For instance, I proposed new web layouts for the app. The original one was modeled to reflect exactly what the phone app would show in a thin vertical center column, but I wanted to know if I could recreate the content to use up all the negative space.

I took inspiration from landing pages on the web to create two different layouts centered around the size of the main image the user could upload: one for vertical images, and one for horizontal images. I had to create two experiences that could easily adapt to any amount of content the user put in, but was rigid enough to remain beautiful. 

Since these are advertisement templates, I wanted to focus on the visuals. I was also aware of the fact that most users would be uploading photos from their phones, so I used photos I took from my iPhone 6 on the mockups. 

I also managed the GLTYR's social media, creating daily content for them like short video ads and graphics. I increased Facebook followers from about 60 to 2,000+ in two weeks. :-)

Future

I had to go overseas for longer than expected during winter to a country that blocks most websites (yeah, I'm talking to you @partsofAsia!), and since I worked remotely for a major part of the internship, I wasn't able to continue at the end. If I had the chance to improve my designs, I would work on bridging the divide between the responsiveness of the mobile and web layouts and picking a cohesive color template. I'd also like to investigate the content writing side of the app, as clear instructions can really make or break the app experience.