Mark your Way
Marks is a word-of-mouth recommendations platform.
It is a curated environment to save and consume the most authentic, refined, and relevant recommendations content from a tight-knit group of friends.
My Role
Co-founder, Product designer.
Product Strategy, User Research, Information Architecture, Visual Design, Prototyping, Interaction design,
"When you are building a startup... You have to give 100%, and you have to be committed. Solving the problem has to be personal or else you’re going to disintegrate."
-Sean Rad, Co-founder of Tinder, Inc.
Background
I founded Marks along with another co-founder. We worked closely as a small team of 4 people, including two engineering team members.
Mark's idea results from requirements that we all face every day.
We want to keep users' experiences in one place and give them easy access to new adventures through recommendations from their friends.
Commercialism is overflowing people with information that the user needs to sort by reading tones of anonymous reviewers creates a struggle not only to find new enjoyable experiences but also frustrating the user with the planning experience process.
Then,
We wanted to understand the potential user's social leisure habits.
How much do they hang out?
Do they share?
To who and How?
Light up the problem.
We conducted two different online questionnaires and multiple interviews.
First,
We focused on the process.
How do people save experience?
How do they document it, if at all?
How do they decide what to do?
Insights
.png)
Data is scattered all over user's different apps, making it harder to retract all experience details.
.png)
Skip saving, The user is so captured in living the moment and just forgets to keep it.
.png)
Planing is pushed to the side due to an Intense lifestyle, overflow of content, and unreliable recommendations. People struggle to plan experience.
.png)
Share the experience as a whole with a friend is a challenging task and takes time. Which led us to think.
Good friends think alike
and likely to enjoy the same experiences.
Our project goals
Optimize the save experience process for the user.
1
2
Improve the Plan new experience process.
3
Share experience as a whole with a tight group of people.
4
Make Friends recommendations accessible.
5
Create a tool for the user to manage his experiences.
Based on our research conclusions, the saving process is crucial for the user to be dynamic and flexible, a seamless experience to emphasize simplicity. With one CTA, the user taps to save a new Mark (aka experience). The app will automatically save the user's location, so the saving process can be short or whole for the user to decide.
It can be as quick as possible for the on-the-go experience or full of details the user can edit or add on whenever he wishes.
Defining the MVP
-
Save as Quick as possible so it will be easy to do on the go with just one CTA click.
-
Focus on the most common save types Geolocation, note, picture/video. It can be either of them or all together.
-
Combine several experiences into one roadmap as a journey.
-
Share it as a whole experience with chosen friends/group.
MARK
-
Search for experience on-the-go by current location.
-
Get recommendations only from people that the user knows and trusts.
-
Planing by saving friend’s experiences.
EXPLORE
-
Share only with closest friends or specific groups.
-
Organize lifetime events.
-
Retract saved journey quickly by type tag search.
MANAGE
Prototype
Visual Design
Our design concept began with the experience layers.
We established a golden path for MARK (aka experience) to combine one or more layers. Based on our research, users save mainly four layers:
Location,
Type,
Picture,
Note.
Each layer got a unique symbol. When the user opens the app, all symbols come together as a unifying gesture.
Results and Learning
Working on Marks has been an amazing journey, getting to know all aspects of building a startup and being the sole product manager and designer. I have learned a great deal from working closely with the most talented people.
Some enlightenments from this project:
-
Daily connecting and constantly sharing progress with the team members is the path to avoid mistakes and create ongoing understanding, smooth workflow, and quick deployment.
-
As a designer, my main focus is design strategy and user experience. While engineering sees technical limitations. Collaborating is a significant key to launching a successful product and avoiding future bumps to reduce rework.
-
Have an iteration mindset. Failing will help you rethink and find a better solution, so be open to experiment your design with users as often as possible.