Sharing your memories on a safe, private platform.
2022
2 Months
Internship Project
UX Designer
Researcher
The Lalo App provides a safe platform for users to share and save memories with their loved ones. As an App MVP, Lalo had a low engagement and retention rate. We found that 50% of users drop out in the onboarding process and only 20% of the users use the app frequently.
This summer, I worked as a UI/UX designer at Lalo to enhance the user experience of the Lalo App. My focus over the summer was to increase user engagement and retention. I recreated the onboarding and posting user experience.
We defined specific goals and metrics at the beginning of my internship. My manager and I aligned on goals that we want to achieve over the next 2 months.
I conducted usability testing with 6 first time users and discovered the following usability issues:
I conduct contextual inquiries with 16 first-time users in their onboarding process. I watched users using the app and asked questions to understand their experience.
Based on our user research data and analysis, we identified 2 pinpoints to focus on this summer.
Users are confused in the onboarding process, as they feel like the onboarding is too long and it does not help them to understand what Lalo is about.
Features Promotion
Situation Selection
Customizations
Complete
How do we make the reduce user drop off rate in the onboarding process? I conducted additional research and found:
After my research and looking through onboarding-related materials on UX standards, I proposed to the product of deleting the onboarding process. Instead, we allow our users to get to the home quicker and can start exploring the app themselves. Since Lalo is a simple application that matches users’ existing mental models, an onboarding experience is not needed. The product manager said that he is convinced with my research and the materials I have provided for this decision.
No onboarding process, straight to the home page. Users are able to explore on the app and create spaces to share memories.
The second main focus I had for this internship was to recreate the posting experience.
Users can only create one type of media in one post, either audio, image, video, or text. We realized that users have multiple media that carry memories, and separating the posts into different is difficult for users to navigate.
Home
Post Type Selection
Video Post
Photo Post
Journal Post
Voice Post
We decided to tackle the posting experience of users and help users to create multi-media posts.
Step 1: Parallel Design
We conducted a parallel design session between myself and another designer to design for the new posting flow. It seemed like our designs are similar in the flows and general structure, so we discussed and created one version that has both of our wireframes combined.
Step 2: Align with Stakeholders
I then met with developers and product managers to align on specifics of this sprint. I presented our findings from the research and proposed a possible direction that we might move towards.
Step 3: Hi-Fi Wireframes
I then took feedback and made some adjustments to create our final wireframes for the multi-media posting experience.
Research Oriented
I learned to collaborate with engineers, designers, and product managers in a fast-paced environment. As a designer, I value research and believe we need to use research and data to create and enhance our experiences. In the beginning, our product managers and engineering team asked me how should we improve the MVP. My answer was to conduct user research to start, since Lalo is a startup company, they did not rely on research. Decisions are made based on the assumptions of product managers.
Advocate For Change
I was able to explain and show the impact research can bring, being an advocate for user research before design. I convinced my stakeholders using data and real-world projects to conduct research before we started to design. It was really helpful, as our product manager came to me and thanked me for the suggestion. They understood the importance of research and we gained many great insights that they hadn’t thought about before.