Gather was my final project for General Assembly. I had always been interested in a social product, but wide aspirations always kept me from finding a focused place to start. The research-driven method I learned at GA was crucial to finding a starting point.
Interviews with young women in my target demographic showed that while today’s social networks enabled sharing to a wide audience, their close relationships - the 5 - 10 people they spend time with - were not accommodated. Users felt that sharing on social media was a superficial activity that did not promote healthy behaviors and created unhealthy goals.
Interviews with young women in my target demographic showed that while today’s social networks enabled sharing to a wide audience, their close relationships - the 5 - 10 people they spend time with - were not accommodated. Users felt that sharing on social media was a superficial activity that did not promote healthy behaviors and created unhealthy goals.
Competitive Analysis
“Posting photos on social media is superficial… makes people make photos for public display… creates an unhealthy attitude.”
- Research Subject
- Research Subject
As I refined the scope and interviewed further, I learned that many of my target users were using messaging and shared albums to pass photos of their experiences back and forth. Worse, many did not have all the photos of their time with their friends, and would only ask for one or two highlight photographs that they remembered were taken. Additionally, users had other issues managing their photo files. Some resided in low resolution on Facebook, while others existed on dusty hard drives. One user had lost photos.
“When I lose photos it makes me feel sad… Like I lost something important that I won’t get back…”
- Research Subject
- Research Subject
I began to focus on a product to automatically gather user’s photos while they were together in order to create lasting digital albums and a more natural social experience. I drew a preliminary workflow to cover a basic use case of taking photos together in a location and saving them to a shared album. The tiny scope of this workflow allowed me to focus as I sketched out my first screens and brought them into Sketch.
Initial Workflow
I created an interactive prototype in InVision and tested on a few people. I need to make some adjustments but was pleased to see many of my ideas understood implicitly. As I find the time, I hope to add a messaging feature set and further develop this project.
Wireframes
