Timeline
November, 2021 - January, 2022
My Role
Product Designer
Team
Dillon Morgan – CEO Nick McCollum – Product Manager
Project Type
SaaS, Web Application Design
November, 2021 - January, 2022
Product Designer
Dillon Morgan – CEO Nick McCollum – Product Manager
SaaS, Web Application Design
Originally, UNUM started as an Instagram visual planning app where users could upload images to preview their Instagram grid before posting. Since 2017, the app has become popular among content creators who curate visually appealing Instagram grids.
In 2021, UNUM aimed to expand its services beyond Instagram to become an all-in-one social media marketing platform. Our goal was to empower users to plan content for platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook. To enhance the social media planning experience across these platforms, we initiated comprehensive research.
Our previous solution, which involved creating "spaces" for various social media platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook, did not resonate well with our users. The concept was to display content (images, videos, or carousels) in the aspect ratio specific to each platform, allowing users to visualize their content accordingly.
However, after a few months of implementing this feature, we discovered that over 90% of created spaces were for Instagram only. This indicates a lack of user interest in visual planning for other social media platforms within our existing solution.
Currently, scheduling a post for social media requires users to create a space beforehand, which is unpopular and unintuitive. We aim to streamline this process by eliminating the extra step, making social media scheduling faster and more straightforward. I am using TikTok scheduling as an example in the user flow below.
Our project manager discovered that users often accumulate hundreds of unorganized items over time within planning spaces, leading to a challenging and time-consuming planning experience. In visual planning spaces, UNUM users tend to "dump" many images on top of the grid, resulting in clutter and difficulty in finding specific images for scheduling. This issue affects user experience, especially when navigating through planned and published content.
In a recent interview with over 15 users, one user named Mei shared that she wished managing her assets in UNUM could be easier and faster. This feedback shows the importance of making it simpler for users to organize and use their media in the app.
To address these challenges, we are introducing the UNUM Media Library—a centralized hub for organizing and accessing assets efficiently. This feature will enable users to save photos, videos, captions, hashtags, posts, marketing ideas, and more in one convenient location. Instead of uploading content separately for each social media platform space, users can upload once and share across multiple platforms simultaneously, significantly reducing preparation time.
The UNUM Media Library also offers powerful planning and creative tools to simplify brand-building on social media. Our goal, as outlined by the CEO, is to encourage users to diversify their planning across multiple platforms and view UNUM as an all-in-one marketing solution. By enticing more users to import media into UNUM, we aim to enhance user engagement and retention.
Before diving into my design explorations, I conducted a competitive analysis by exploring and trialing four different social media management platforms. Through this process, I identified both effective practices to learn from and mistakes to avoid in asset management.
During the wireframing phase, I explored ideas for how users can navigate to the Media Library and brainstormed potential basic functions that could be included within the library.
In this iteration, I merged the Media Library and Spaces into a unified "Home" tab, with each space featuring a sidebar for quick access to the Media Library.
In this iteration, I separated the Media Library and Design Spaces into distinct tabs. The Media Library was prioritized as the first tab, with Design Spaces as the second. The focus was on organizing unsorted assets in the Media Library, making Spaces secondary.
In this iteration, users can switch between the Media Library and spaces within the Design Spaces tab.
The sidebar Media Library feature was included in all iterations to enable users to view and drag-and-drop media directly into their spaces.
Our project manager considered implementing the sidebar exclusively within Design Spaces. However, this approach could lead users to create unnecessary spaces solely to access the Media Library, which contradicts our intuitive design approach based on insights from our research during the discovery phase.
I made 2 design iterations for the media and note thumbnails. We decided to go with version 2, which has a more uniform look.
In order to be able to make changes throughout the prototype faster, I built components for the thumbnails.
After discussing with the stakeholders, product manager and designer, we decided to test with iteration 1 and 3. We also came up with a scenario for the testers to follow and finish the tasks in Maze.
In order to get accurate data, I set up the questions in both of the Maze tests exactly the same to prevent any extraneous factors from affecting the results.
There were around 50+ users joining the test and 20% of them finished all the questions. At UNUM, we did an internal vote for each versions and most of us rooted for the V1 to win. Here’s how the results turned out:
Both versions of the media library received good feedback from the testers. A majority of them would like to see this feature in UNUM.
The opinion scale of their overall experience for V1 scored slightly lower than V3. Most of the testers understood the idea of Media Library. Some testers didn’t understand the feature because they only wanted to use UNUM for Instagram, rather than for all of social platforms.
"It is similar to Canva, but seems more focused on Social which I really like. Seems like it would be helpful to get content organized, copywritten, and sent out in batches."
"A good feature that allows users to upload their media into a library and store it there until they're ready to schedule it. Good backup measure in case the original file gets deleted. Also good for teams, designer could upload into the media library and marketing/social media can caption and schedule."
"I prefer to use a different scheduling platform"
I also found out from the report that, when asking testers to upload media, they often paused for a longer time at the import screen. It might be likely because the design of the modal takes time for users to process all of the available options. In the end, I came up with a minimal import methods selection UI that will help users make decision faster.
The “Create post” button was hard to find when we asked users to create a post with media. So I made more iterations of media hover states to improve this experience of creating posts with the media.
Both versions of the design performed similarly in the usability test. Although the UNUM team preferred Version 1 (V1), we decided to consider implementing Version 3 (V3) due to its better overall feedback.
Our product manager skillfully translated our decisions into actionable tickets for developers to implement.
Throughout the process—from identifying and analyzing problems to gathering insights from testing—the product manager and I effectively communicated our decisions to stakeholders and developers.
I gained valuable experience in collecting and prioritizing requests from stakeholders and users to define project scope and requirements for a complex project. Additionally, I learned the importance of documenting research findings to prevent recurring issues. The insights gathered from this project will not only benefit our current efforts but also inform future projects aimed at enhancing UNUM's user experience.
Originally, UNUM started as an Instagram visual planning app where users could upload images to preview their Instagram grid before posting. Since 2017, the app has become popular among content creators who curate visually appealing Instagram grids.
In 2021, UNUM aimed to expand its services beyond Instagram to become an all-in-one social media marketing platform. Our goal was to empower users to plan content for platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook. To enhance the social media planning experience across these platforms, we initiated comprehensive research.
Our previous solution, which involved creating "spaces" for various social media platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook, did not resonate well with our users. The concept was to display content (images, videos, or carousels) in the aspect ratio specific to each platform, allowing users to visualize their content accordingly.
However, after a few months of implementing this feature, we discovered that over 90% of created spaces were for Instagram only. This indicates a lack of user interest in visual planning for other social media platforms within our existing solution.
Currently, scheduling a post for social media requires users to create a space beforehand, which is unpopular and unintuitive. We aim to streamline this process by eliminating the extra step, making social media scheduling faster and more straightforward. I am using TikTok scheduling as an example in the user flow below.
Our project manager discovered that users often accumulate hundreds of unorganized items over time within planning spaces, leading to a challenging and time-consuming planning experience. In visual planning spaces, UNUM users tend to "dump" many images on top of the grid, resulting in clutter and difficulty in finding specific images for scheduling. This issue affects user experience, especially when navigating through planned and published content.
In a recent interview with over 15 users, one user named Mei shared that she wished managing her assets in UNUM could be easier and faster. This feedback shows the importance of making it simpler for users to organize and use their media in the app.
To address these challenges, we are introducing the UNUM Media Library—a centralized hub for organizing and accessing assets efficiently. This feature will enable users to save photos, videos, captions, hashtags, posts, marketing ideas, and more in one convenient location. Instead of uploading content separately for each social media platform space, users can upload once and share across multiple platforms simultaneously, significantly reducing preparation time.
The UNUM Media Library also offers powerful planning and creative tools to simplify brand-building on social media. Our goal, as outlined by the CEO, is to encourage users to diversify their planning across multiple platforms and view UNUM as an all-in-one marketing solution. By enticing more users to import media into UNUM, we aim to enhance user engagement and retention.
Before diving into my design explorations, I conducted a competitive analysis by exploring and trialing four different social media management platforms. Through this process, I identified both effective practices to learn from and mistakes to avoid in asset management.
During the wireframing phase, I explored ideas for how users can navigate to the Media Library and brainstormed potential basic functions that could be included within the library.
In this iteration, I merged the Media Library and Spaces into a unified "Home" tab, with each space featuring a sidebar for quick access to the Media Library.
In this iteration, I separated the Media Library and Design Spaces into distinct tabs. The Media Library was prioritized as the first tab, with Design Spaces as the second. The focus was on organizing unsorted assets in the Media Library, making Spaces secondary.
In this iteration, users can switch between the Media Library and spaces within the Design Spaces tab.
The sidebar Media Library feature was included in all iterations to enable users to view and drag-and-drop media directly into their spaces.
Our project manager considered implementing the sidebar exclusively within Design Spaces. However, this approach could lead users to create unnecessary spaces solely to access the Media Library, which contradicts our intuitive design approach based on insights from our research during the discovery phase.
I made 2 design iterations for the media and note thumbnails. We decided to go with version 2, which has a more uniform look.
In order to be able to make changes throughout the prototype faster, I built components for the thumbnails.
After discussing with the stakeholders, product manager and designer, we decided to test with iteration 1 and 3. We also came up with a scenario for the testers to follow and finish the tasks in Maze.
In order to get accurate data, I set up the questions in both of the Maze tests exactly the same to prevent any extraneous factors from affecting the results.
There were around 50+ users joining the test and 20% of them finished all the questions. At UNUM, we did an internal vote for each versions and most of us rooted for the V1 to win. Here’s how the results turned out:
Both versions of the media library received good feedback from the testers. A majority of them would like to see this feature in UNUM.
The opinion scale of their overall experience for V1 scored slightly lower than V3. Most of the testers understood the idea of Media Library. Some testers didn’t understand the feature because they only wanted to use UNUM for Instagram, rather than for all of social platforms.
"It is similar to Canva, but seems more focused on Social which I really like. Seems like it would be helpful to get content organized, copywritten, and sent out in batches."
"A good feature that allows users to upload their media into a library and store it there until they're ready to schedule it. Good backup measure in case the original file gets deleted. Also good for teams, designer could upload into the media library and marketing/social media can caption and schedule."
"I prefer to use a different scheduling platform"
I also found out from the report that, when asking testers to upload media, they often paused for a longer time at the import screen. It might be likely because the design of the modal takes time for users to process all of the available options. In the end, I came up with a minimal import methods selection UI that will help users make decision faster.
The “Create post” button was hard to find when we asked users to create a post with media. So I made more iterations of media hover states to improve this experience of creating posts with the media.
Both versions of the design performed similarly in the usability test. Although the UNUM team preferred Version 1 (V1), we decided to consider implementing Version 3 (V3) due to its better overall feedback.
Our product manager skillfully translated our decisions into actionable tickets for developers to implement.
Throughout the process—from identifying and analyzing problems to gathering insights from testing—the product manager and I effectively communicated our decisions to stakeholders and developers.
I gained valuable experience in collecting and prioritizing requests from stakeholders and users to define project scope and requirements for a complex project. Additionally, I learned the importance of documenting research findings to prevent recurring issues. The insights gathered from this project will not only benefit our current efforts but also inform future projects aimed at enhancing UNUM's user experience.