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ReadThrough 2022

Welcome to Your Script’s New Home

Developed by a script-writer who wanted to listen to scripts on long commutes

This one-of-a-kind app allows scriptwriters, readers, and actors to collaborate, rehearse, & hear their scripts read aloud at home or on the go.

Before
After

The app's features and functions were not presented in a clear and intuitive manner, leading to confusion and decreased engagement

Goals

  • Improve usability and enhance learnability by optimizing the app's architecture and implementing intuitive onboarding.
  • Boost user engagement through the use of tasteful gamification and an updated design language.

Constraints

  • Avoid major structural changes to minimize the amount of development work needed.
  • Accommodate potential product expansion to ensure sustainable scalability.

My Role

As the Mobile Designer, I collaborated with the Desktop Designer on ideation, sketching, and final design decisions, while also contributing to quantitative and qualitative research and data synthesis during the research phase.

Timeline

3 Weeks / May 2022

Deliverables

User Research

Mobile + Desktop Design

Prototypes

Platform

Responsive Web
React Native Mobile App

Team

2 Researchers
2 Designers

Discovery

We began with user testing to understand the high bounce and low retention rates

From testing the current product, we discovered that new users were experiencing confusion when they first landed on the homepage and had difficulty completing basic tasks such as recording, sharing, and commenting.

* 14 Usability Tests were conducted

“
I’m under the comment tab, but I don’t know how to add a comment. Oh, here it is. Okay, that was not very intuitive to me.

After conducting user interviews, we discovered that pain points were similar among the three user groups (writers, readers, & actors)

To help us focus on improving usability and increasing new user retention, we created two personas. One persona was tailored to those who had never used the app before, while the other persona addressed the needs of users who had uploaded and shared many scripts.

* 6 current-user interviews were conducted

Veteran User

Goals

Share work with peers for collaboration or rehearse and listen to lines read aloud.

Frustrations
  • Cluttered dashboard makes files difficult to locate after many uploads.
  • Notifications are not easily accessible.

New User

Goals

Review a script that was shared with them or sign up and upload their own scripts.

Frustrations
  • Homepage does not provide much context or guidance.
  • Features are difficult to find and use.

Proposed Solutions

01.

Organizing cluttered documents by offering filtered views

Before:

"My Docs" quickly became cluttered with many uploads, folders, and shared documents.

After:

Home —
All documents and folders stored on the account
My Files —
Only documents uploaded by the account owner
Shared with Me —
Only documents shared by peers
Folders —
Folders only view
02.

Quick and optional onboarding flow tailored for each user

Original Home Page

Users were confused when landing on an empty dashboard, which resulted in a 70% bounce rate.

However, development hours and potential product expansion prevented us from designing a product landing page. So, we opted for a quick and optional onboarding flow based on the user's intended use.

03.

Easily accessible features and an engaging experience

Previously difficult to locate, the Read Aloud feature and sharing options are now easily found behind the kebab menu.

Our idea for tasteful gamification:

  • Giving the reader a sense of achievement by placing a "Finished" button at the end of the script. After pressing, they are thanked for their time and given the opportunity to leave feedback.
  • Introducing a rating feature to increase the level of engagement for both the Writer and the Reader.

Mobile Script Menu Exploration

Original Script Menu

Going full-width and offering easy access to the main menu

The original design used tabs to navigate through the script menu, and hid useful functions like sharing behind the “info” tab.

I decided to keep the collapsing menu in the final design since the nested menu did not feel intuitive enough and the divided menus looked cluttered.

v1 - Nested

v2 - Divided

v3 - Collapsing

Visual Design

Users expressed distaste for the brown color scheme, so we gave the brand a fresh new look

We worked with the existing purple accent color to create a modern look and feel.

Outcome & Takeaways

We're happy to see that the first updates to ReadThrough using our research and design ideas shipped in Q4 of 2022

After analyzing some of my mobile design decisions, I am most curious about the usability of my script menu ideas and would have loved more time to find the best option for users.

This project was such a valuable experience for the beginning of my design career as it gave me the opportunity to navigate team tension, tight deadlines, constraints, ambiguity, and more.