Interface Designer, User Researcher, Designer, Strategist
Phone addiction is a major problem, specifically for the younger generation. Snazz is an app that provides a solution to help reduce screen time by blocking apps on a schedule or instantly blocking apps. The Snazz team had a great idea for an app but the user interface needed an entire revamp. I assisted in designing the app along with conducting research and interviews to test the features and make sure they were intuitive.
Snazz app helps users reduce their screen time through a calm and simple interface. The app needed to be straightforward and quickly navigable as the point is to help users get off their phones.
6 months
Figma, Wireframing, interface design, Prototyping, App Testing
Ivy Do, Justin Diraddo, Rozheen Nersisyan
When I first joined the Snazz team, the app was bare bones in terms of design. It lacked a strong sense of cohesion and didn’t offer many features for users. While the app did function, it had many bugs that caused frustration and confusion.
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Before diving into the design work it was essential to assess our competition and see what other apps were already doing well. The main goal of Snazz is to get users to reduce screen time and because there are other apps that have the same goal we wanted to see what we could do better. For example, in the app ScreenZen I liked that they had a progress page that showed data to the user in a digestible way. I realized we could show more data to help the user understand why they are using their phone.
By speaking with users and seeing what other screen time apps were doing, we compiled a list of new features to add to improve the user experience.
As we developed the ideas for the new features, we also had to think about where they would fit into the app, so we worked on a map of the application to decide where things would live.
Screen Time Analytics: A page in the app that breaks down a user's screen time by day, week, month, and year, and gives their top apps and what percentage it has changed since the previous time increment.
App Groups: Allows users to categorize apps into groups such as “Social media” or “work apps” to reuse the same categories and create a faster way to make a new session.
Instant Session: Users can block any apps at anytime for a chosen time increment, the interface needed reworking for a more straightforward user experience.
Geosession: Users can block apps when they enter a certain location, for example, they can block all their social media apps while they are at work, or all their work apps while they are at the gym
Revamp onboarding: Onboarding is an opportunity to show users the various features of the app, and we wanted to find a solution that was thorough without being too long and frustrating to users.
Coming in, the app already had an orange and yellow color scheme, a logo, and typography. I inquired if the team could reconsider color palate shades to improve contrast for users with vision needs. We landed on a color palette that was soft but legible. The main priority was for the app to have a calming feel, so we designed cards with a soft brown shadow and made sure there were no sharp edges. We put together an asset library of the colors, text styles, buttons, active/ inactive states, cards, widgets, icons, and navigation menus.
We worked from rough sketches, and each week refined and improved the ideas as we progressed to mid-fi and hi-fi.
We prototyped all the new features to be able to test how the screens would connect to each other and make sure it would be intuitive to users. In this phase we realized places where screens could be reworked, for example, in the app group feature we saw a way to combine two screens together to remove a step and create more clairty.
The app was being developed as we were designing, so it was important to have a clear line of communication with the development team. Each week we would have meetings with one of the devs to confirm that the designs were within the realm of what could be coded.
We conducted app walkthroughs with users, having them create sessions and tell us what they were thinking about the app. Talking with users helped us understand ways that the app could be reworked for a simpler experience. For example, many users were frustrated by the confusion on how to cancel a session, so we reworked the interface design to be more clear by adding the delete button to an earlier screen. We compiled the user interviews into an affinity map. Here we were able to combine recurring trends among users and prioritize which changes to make first and which could be done down the road. Below are examples of user feedback we put into the affinity map.
Would like to have been able to edit schedule during break.
Wants to set duration of break before countdown, as countdown implies break will start immediately.
In onboarding, user did not know their current screen time metrics to gage what to put for goals.
Wants a search bar to find specific apps on app picker page.
Need a more clear wording for goal setting in onboarding.
Have a motivational prompt when someone cancels a session to encourage them to keep going.
Did not find green active card signifier clear enough.
Wants visual confirmation that her session had started.
Would like integration with other apps such as Google Calendar.
