Bookmarking tools are graveyards for what you forget to read, and inboxes are cluttered with old links. As a concept project, IĀ created a bookmarking tool that helps you remember the link and what's in it.
Weāve done lotās of work, letās check some from here.
I began with a survey to answer some key questions:
How are people saving links?
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What works?
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What doesnāt?
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What do they want to change about it?
The survey got 55 responses from 20+ U.S. cities. To dig deeper, IĀ looked at respondents who saved lots of articles online, the type of media bookmarking tools are used for the most.
100%Ā of those who used a tool like Pocket also emailed links to themselves
Read the full survey, results, and analysis
Regina
ā24, Young marketer living in NYC
Bobby
ā20, College Sophomore in Philadelphia
Read more about Bobby & Regina
The survey showed that the leading link saving methods were email, Safari Reading list, and Google bookmarks. A SWOT analysis revealed some interesting opportunities:
Strengths & Weaknesses
Opportunities
Read the full competitive analysis
The survey and personas revealed that there were four core functions the platform needed to provide. These became user stories:
āAs a new or returning user, I want to save a link so that I can gather helpful and interesting links"
āAs a new or returning user, I want to remember to read a link so that all my collecting isn't a wasteā
āAs a new or returning user, I want to get rid of old links so that I donāt have an overwhelming dashboardā
āAs a new or returning user, I want to remember what's in a link so that I get something out of what I saveā
Before adding the more specific user stories, I researched reading retention techniques so that I could identify clear steps users could take to remember what they saved. The top techniques included visualizing what you read, articulating how the information relates to what you already know, and identifying the 3 main points. I created a retention question sequence around these techniques.
Read the user stories
From my survey I wanted to avoid the mistakes of other link saving tools. These tools asked users to download yet another app and learn new ways of storing and organizing links. They didn't seem to ask why someone would want save a link, or ask how the act of saving could provide genuine value to the user. The survey made it clear that all these link saving and organization tools were missing out on helping people actually read what they saved. What if people could learn from all the links they saved? What if they had a tool that worked within the way they were already saving links?
The user flows reflected how people were already saving links, while using the science of reading retention.
āSee all the user flows
Testers were confused about whether Forget Me Not was an app or website.
In thinking about how a company might create an MVP, it was clear a responsive website would be the best starting point. Building a website would be the fastest way to see if there was a demand for a tool like Forget Me Not, and it would work on all devices. The wireframes were changed to make this clear.
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āSee the low-fi prototype
āSee the test results
Several ideas came up over and over as Forget Me Not developed:
Clarity Ā· Forget Me Not is about bringing clarity to link saving and to what you remember from the links you save.
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Simplicity Ā· Forget Me Not is a simple and practical solution that doesnāt rely on complicated features or learning how to use another app.
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Intuition Ā· Forget Me Not is about simple, intuitive actions that help you get more out of the time you spend reading online.
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BrightnessĀ· Forget Me Not helps people remember what they read so they can learn better and feel brighter.
I used these to develop a visual identity for Forget Me Not, beginning with mind maps and moodboards and ending with a full brand guide that included copy tone, color palette, logos, and typefaces.
Read the brand guide
Usability testing along with a few more user tests helped to refine some key design decisions.
Result:
Testers selected the orangeā
faster than the blue.
Result:ā
preferred the orange button.
Result:ā
preferred the questions at the end of an article over a popup.
The user testing showed that several areas needed to improve:
See user test results
āSee usability test results
The copy in the onboarding sequence was refined along with some other visual tweaks.
The biggest challenge was to make the ārememberā feature more usable while not relying on an annoying popup, or buttons that only appeared at the end of the article.
After more brainstorming, I realized that I could add two buttons to the top menu. By making them clearly different from the navigation bar and pinning the menu to the top of the screen, users could tap ārememberā or āarchiveā at the moment they were finished with the link, even if they hadnāt scrolled to the bottom. This maximized the chance they would do the retention questions.
Two final user tests provided the feedback for the final version of the prototype. The label and priority colors were changed and the copy in the onboarding and saving sequences was refined.
Forget Me Not was now ready!
Weāve done lotās of work, letās check some from here.