Project Overview
Design Team
Robert Chacon - UX/UI Designer
Abrar Sawani - UX/UI Designer
Sumit Barua - UX/Ui Designer
My Contributions
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping
Competitive and Comparative Analysis
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Problem Statements & HMWs
Group Presentation Slides
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Google Slides
Objective
The main objective of this project was to design a new feature as a group for an existing brand, like Reddit, to meet a business goal.
Reddit Overview
Reddit is the place where you can dive into anything and connect with people on any topic. Members of Reddit can submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images, and videos, which are hen voted up or down by other members and make comments. There are over 100,000+ communities.
User Interviews
We wanted to find out what were some pain points users have while using the current Reddit app, so my group and I conducted interviews of regular Redditors. We interviewed a total of 6 users. We categorized the data from user interviews and created an affinity map to see what potential feature(s) our group could create.
We noticed that the top two contenders of improvements for Reddit suggested by user interviewees were a feature to better organized saved posts and a feature to allow users to post anonymously. Upon further research, our group discovered that organizing saved posts is a premium feature on Reddit. As a result, our group decided to come up with a feature that allows users to post anonymously without creating a throwaway account.
Competitive & Comparative Analysis
Competitive Analysis
Each designer analyzed two direct competitors. I specifically looked at 9GAG and Tumblr. Neither one allows you to post anonymously from your main account. Like Reddit, you’d have to create a throwaway account.
Comparative
Each designer looked at one indirect competitor to Reddit. I specifically looked at the features for Pinterest, which also doesn’t allow you to post anonymously from your main account, unless you create a throwaway account.
Persona
Name: CJ
Location: Salt Lake City, UT
Age: 27
Occupation: Journalist
Scenario: My account isn’t exactly the most ambiguous, so it wouldn’t be hard for somebody who knows me to figure out that this is me. I often pass up on talking about more sensitive topics in my life because I don’t want that being shared with everybody I potentially know.
Goals & Needs: I would like to post anonymously from my main account so that I can still collect Karma Points, but also make sure that other users aren’t able to come onto my posting history and have those that know me possibly figure out my identity.
Pain Point: I don’t want to go through the trouble of making a throwaway account when sharing info that might reveal my identity.
Problem Statement
Our client, Reddit, wants to implement an anonymous posting feature to enhance users’ posting experiences.
Our design idea to address this problem is to implement an anonymous feature that doesn’t lead to the user’s main account.
HMWs
HMW help Reddit Users feel safe to post about sensitive topics that might reveal their identity?
HMW help Reddit Users post about sensitive topics without creating throwaway accounts?
User Flow
To assist the users to navigate through Reddit, we created this user flow centering on the user posting anonymously from their main account. Creating this user flow helped us think through the necessary steps a user would take as well as their user experience while posting anonymously from their main account.
Sketched Wireframes
We then sketched wireframes based on the results of the competitive and comparative analysis and user flow.
Wireframes 1-5
These wireframes demonstrate onboarding, logging in, home page, and create a post page of current Reddit App.
Wireframes 6-9
These wireframes demonstrate how users would be able to use the anonymous feature as well as being able to check that an anonymous username is attached to the post.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
From the sketched wireframes, we created a Mid-Fidelity wireframes, which helped us get a better visual of the feature we’re adding to Reddit.
Usability Testing
-
Tasks
Task 1: Log in click on the community icon button and find the subreddit r/AskReddit. Ask a question and post it using the anonymous feature
Task 2: View live post to ensure it has a Reddit generated username (not main account username)
-
Users
Participants: 6
Ages: 20 - 35
-
Results
Top takeaways are as follows:
User had difficulty spotting the “Your post is live” notification
User suggested to generate a username that isn’t obvious that its its fake, such as “Anon1234567”
User suggested implementing some sort of ‘dark mode’ as another way to indicate anonymous posting mode
A/B Testing and Iterations
To improve on the pain points that users faced during our usability testing, we decided to conduct A/B testing to solve issues with our design.
We conducted A & B testing between these two options due to user feedback. Option A is the original design while option B is the iterated design with a dark background and generated username that doesn’t contain “Anon” for anonymous. The A & B testing results showed 68% of users preferred option B and therefore we implemented it in our iteration.
Even though we only had one user have a problem with the notification’s position at the bottom (option A), we still wanted to conduct A & B testing between these two options to gauge users’ preferences. Option A is the original design and option B is the iterated design with a darkened background and positioned the notification to the center of the screen to bring more attention to it. The A & B testing results showed 74% of users preferred option B and therefore we implemented it in our iteration.
Style Guide
We wanted to stay true to Reddit, so we created a style guide of colors and fonts based on the current Reddit App for our high-fidelity mockup.
High Fidelity Mockup
Next Steps
If time would have allowed, we would’ve liked to explore the following pain points expressed by our initial user interviews:
A better search engine
A feature to change username at will
A closed caption feature for videos
