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TRNDS
PROCESS PAGE
In the spring of 2024, I led a team of 5 through the entirety of the Goal Directed Design process to create TRNDS, an all-in-one digital platform for social media marketers and businesses to compile content, schedule posts, and track analytics. This product was designed with the user at the core, and was a product of extensive user research, an iterative design process, and the collaboration of a driven team.
Approach: Goal Directed Design (GDD)
Team Size: 5 Individuals
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Adobe Illustrator
Application: Social Media Marketing Hub
Role: Team Leader, Research Facilitator, UI Manager
Duration: 6 weeks
introduction
🚧 Under Construction 🚧
This process page is currently being updated to better support my portfolio.
Check back soon to see the full process behind TRNDS!
Hello There! I'm Chrissy Fortier. I completed this project within my final semester of school to achieve my B.S. in Interactive Design. TRNDS is a 'super app' that merges functions of multiple existing software's into one centralized hub. We engaged with subject matter experts and conducted interviews with target users to gather insights and validate our assumptions. The result is a comprehensive solution that addresses users' pain points and goals- TRNDS. TRNDS streamlines social media management tasks, offering features such as content scheduling, analytics tracking, engagement monitoring, and collaboration tools. This product was made with the user at the heart of the application, and a testimony of an effective and thorough design process.
Team
Kickoff Meeting
Project Pitch
At the start of the project, I pitched my idea for the product. I created internal team goals to preface and support my proposed applications. Our team unanimously decided to move forward with a social media management app, which we brainstormed the following functions for:
1. The ability to manage multiple social medias
2. Post scheduling with automatic posting
3. Data and analytics from individual and compiled platforms
To kickstart our project, we made the following problem and assumption statements to outline our product goals.
1. The ability to manage multiple social medias
2. Post scheduling with automatic posting
3. Data and analytics from individual and compiled platforms
To kickstart our project, we made the following problem and assumption statements to outline our product goals.
Problem Statement
The current state of the social media management field has focused primarily on reaching customers through platform-specific products and tools. What existing products fail to address is the ability to have a centralized location for social media related tasks and data. Our product will address this gap by a platform that acts a ‘hub’ for all social media actions and analytics.
Assumption Statements
Who is the product for?
Social media/marketing managers and agencies, content creators, and small businesses looking to manage their social media.
What will it be used for?
Streamline social media tasks and increase work efficiency.
Who are our competitors?
Other social media management apps
(Hootsuite, Postybirb, Sprout Social, etc) Individual Social Media platforms
(Instagram, Tiktok, X, etc)
What problem does it solve?
The need to manage a widespread amount of data and tasks across multiple platforms and people.
How will we measure success?
Increased efficiency in social media efforts for users and streamlined functionality between platforms.
What sets us apart?
data- driven, user-focused design and with multiple features in a unified interface.
research
Literature Review
Behavior Variables Patterns
Competitive Audit
Behavior Variables Patterns
Competitive Audit
Behavior Variables Patterns
User Interviews
One of my original project goals for the team was to engage with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Given that our project focused on a business-to-business product, we sought out users with relevant field experience who could provide helpful insights on the requirements of a social media management tool. Over the course of a week, we conducted five interviews with a variety of industry professionals, gathering valuable insights into the landscape of social media management.
These interactions provided us with a deeper understanding of existing tools, identified opportunities, and uncovered pain points within the field. Through these interviews, we aimed to gain insights into user behaviors, lifestyles, and goals to effectively inform our product design decisions.
Interview 1
Jan 30, 2024
data analyst
Provided valuable insight on data visualization best practices and experiences with analytic functions. Spoke on incorporating AI for a more robust user experience.
Interview 2
Feb 1, 2024
social media manager
Shared experiences doing agency and independent work, managing a variety of platforms, working with a team, and scheduling content. Walked through many pros and cons of the field.
Interview 3
Feb 3, 2024
social media manager
Gave helpful feedback on social media management at scale, generating content for over 20 accounts, along with her independent small business accounts.
Interview 4
Feb 4, 2024
marketer
Communicated challenges with finding efficient and affordable social media management tools, and shared perspective on long form/written content.
Interview 5
Feb 6, 2024
social media manager
Provided insight on building her own social media agency, and the organization neccesary to manage multiple clients with avariety of accounts and schedules.
User Quotes
A peak into our user interviews...
“There's a lot of problems with [competitor], it was just glitchy. And just with any platform or program, you know, you have some days, it just doesn't work. One of the major cons was the analytics never matched up."
Savannah
Interview 2
I kind of rely on [platform]'s native analytics more than I ever used to, because [competitor] has just made it way more expensive to see a lot of the granular stuff I was seeing before.
Sam
Interview 4
“So having the ability to quickly look at things on my phone, whether that's dashboards, whether it's a proof of time sheet, whether it's login to a meeting and be able to look at a shared screen, there are a lot of mobile functions that I rely on.”
Crystal
Interview 1
“So like analytics is a huge thing. For me, know, tracking to see what's working, what's not, how many clicks this post got, how many likes, comments, things like that. We need to make sure that they have the ability to track that stuff.”
Jamie
Interview 5
“We are on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. So it's 22 accounts on those three platforms.”
Paula
Interview 3
"The main thing that I like about [platform] is the planner- being able to plan out the posts and see what times they're scheduled at and see them all in order what's going on across multiple people's profiles, too.
Sam
Interview 4
Affinity Mapping
Immediately after each interview, we engaged in an affinity mapping exercise using FigJam. Each team member spent several minutes jotting down observations, questions, and notes from the discussion. By systematically identifying patterns and commonalities across these insights, we were able to distill our research findings and establish key observations to prepare for the modeling stage.
Category 1
Aug 08, 2022
Interview 1
What is a content management system?
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Read Article
Category 3
Interview 2
The power of automation, natively in Webflow
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Read Article
Category 2
Interview 3
Low fidelity vs. high fidelity: the differences between design prototypes
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Read Article
Category 1
Interview 4
What is a content management system?
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Read Article
Category 1
Aug 08, 2022
Interview 5
What is a content management system?
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Read Article
Modeling
Behavior Variables
Transitioning from the Research Phase, the Modeling Phase involves synthesizing the collected data. This phase provides designers with a systematic approach to distill content for further design considerations. Its primary aim is to construct a hypothetical user, resulting in the creation of a 'persona'. According to Cooper, personas are "the main character(s) in a narrative, scenario-based approach to design" (Cooper, 26). They embody the user behaviors, goals, and intentions identified during the Research Phase.Before developing our persona, my team and I needed to synthesize the data collected from our interviews with five individuals, as mentioned in the previous phase. Following the interviews, we meticulously compared notes, seeking commonalities or shared behaviors among participants. Our objective was to identify recurring user traits, attitudes, and goals across multiple interviews. Subsequently, we distilled our findings into over a dozen behavioral variables to represent the data. The visualization below illustrates each of the five interviewees on a sliding scale, facilitating the synthesis and condensation of our research findings.
Behavioral Clusters
In reviewing these behavior variables, our team swiftly discerned clusters that encapsulated shared traits among interviewees. The groupings presented below signify prevalent behaviors uncovered during our research. For instance, a majority of our interviewees expressed high levels of self-motivation, and all participants indicated a preference for a minimalist user interface over a complex application.
Persona
The predominant groupings outlined above are amalgamated to form a single hypothetical user known as a 'persona'. This persona mirrors the behavioral patterns identified among our interviewees, providing stakeholders with a tangible representation of our research findings. By creating a narrative around our persona, stakeholders can vividly envision a hypothetical user. When crafting designs to meet user objectives, our team can consult our persona to explore potential user goals. This iterative process resulted in the creation of our persona, Eileen Miles, depicted below.
requirements
With a contextual scenario in place, our UX strategy team devised a comprehensive list of app requirements. Drawing from our context scenario, we pinpointed essential features. For instance, if our persona depends on task reminders via notifications, integrating notification functionality becomes imperative in our final product. Leveraging insights from user motivations, behaviors, and goals, we curated a set of requirements to align with user objectives. Additionally, we incorporated insights gleaned from our literature review, competitive analysis, and initial vision statement to ensure alignment with stakeholder and business objectives. Armed with these requirements, we are poised to initiate the creation of low-fidelity wireframes.
Frameworks
As we entered into the Frameworks phase with an established list of requirements, our team prioritized functionality over specific visual design decisions, opting for low-fidelity prototypes with minimal use of color and visuals. By limiting ourselves to these basic representations, we focused on determining the organization, or information architecture, of the app. This approach ensured that the product's design emphasized how it works rather than how it looks, laying a solid foundation for future UI decisions.
© 2024