Mindebogen
A digital universe for sharing stories and memories in personal memory books
UX designer and researcher | September - December 2019
Skills
UX Design
UI Design
UX Research
Tools
Adobe XD
Figma
Team
Me (Design Lead)
Software Eng.
Project manager
In this project my main role was as UX-designer and researcher on the first two thirds of the project. My part of the project took place from september to december 2019 as I was an intern at the company in that period. The project was then handed over to designers with more experience to finish the designs. Today, three and a half year later, my knowledge and skills have improved, so in this case study I will use the insights that I found and the user flow I mapped out back then, but design the UI from scratch including design system and some documentation.
During the project in 2019 I communicated with the software engineer and manager about feasible feature implementation, risks, time frame and budget.
Finished design, created in cooporation with more experienced designers
Project Summary
The goal of this project was to design the digital universe behind ‘Mindebogen’. The users of this should be people of different ages, genders and backgrounds. That also means different experience in use of digital product which became a big focus in the design process.
The concept of the solution
We want to enable and encourage people to compile stories and pictures to create a book of remembrance. When a child loses a parent, grief is not just an intense emotion that fades out with time. It is a feeling that returns many times over the course of their life, a feeling of loss and missed opportunity to get to know the parent before they passed away.
With this personal book of memory, we give the relatives an opportunity to place their loss and grief into stories and pass it onto the children who can, in some way, have the parent with them throughout their life.
For simplicity the person who these stories and books are written about, will be called the protagonist in this case study.
Research
I did two rounds of surveys and one round of user interviews with people of different ages and levels of digital experience. I combined the data from my research rounds and defined four main insights that would guide the design.
Simplicity
In order to cater to the need of the least experienced I need to keep the designs as simple as possible and design for that user group first.
Trust
Trust towards a system mostly comes from trust towards the brand. Having easy access to the contact information and information about the people behind helps the user feel safe.
Familiarity
People who rarely use digital systems get frustrated when features are too unknown or complex. Implementing features that they are familiar with should result in a good task
completion rate.
Devices
The tasks to be done in this experience are fairly time consuming (0.5-2h). Bigger devices like a desktop or iPad are usually preferred to immerse themselves in tasks of this length.
User problem
How do we ensure that all the users feel safe using the digital product and are inspired to share their personal stories and memories using it?
Business problem
When part of the user group is discouraged to participate in the story sharing because of complex user flow, initiators are less likely to purchase a book because they feel like they can’t create a full picture of the protagonist in the story.
User Flows
After doing explorations on user flows, I defined the co-creation concept and two key users:
.png)
Storyteller
This user is invited to participate in creating a book. Their task is to write memoirs within the timeline that is defined.
Initiator (+ storyteller)
This user creates a book, and is responsible for administrative tasks in creating the book, such as defining a deadline, inviting storytellers and in the end order the book for print. This user can still participate in sharing stories.
I then mapped out the user flows for each type to get an idea of the logic and to visualize the idea to the developer and co-designers.
Storyteller user flow
Initiator user flow
Design explorations
After mapping out the user flows for the two types of users we created varying quality fidelity of mockups to see if the logic would make sense in a user interface as well. I created the low fidelity mockup, that would demonstrate the logic further than the user flow maps. Then more experienced UI designers from the Aarhus agency Et.Al took over and created the finished designs. Small interactions were added or excluded from the original flow during these explorations to improve the interaction flow.
Medium Fidelity Explorations
Storyteller
Initiator (+ storyteller)
High Fidelity Explorations
As mentioned the medium fidelity mockups were passed on the more experienced UI and UX designers and the result of their work and my research and analytics are these mockups:
Storyteller
