T2 Project Reflection and Next Steps Worksheet

[amandajaisun]

T2 Project Reflection and Next Steps Worksheet

Original idea

Revisit your original goals (check out your project proposal).

MVP Progress?

What progress did you make towards your original MVP / on your stretch goals?

• Can select predetermined font.
• We have a functional, not-too-confusing UI and people can actually send letters back and forth in real time
• We have a backend with user authenitification and tokens

How is it different?

How is your project different from what you envisioned?

• Handwriting does not really factor in yet
• The UI has less personality than we thought it would at this point, so we'll work on adding more using things like stamps and stickers
• We will likely not end up using widgets

Still happy with direction?

Most importantly, are you still happy with the direction that your project is headed?

We all seem to still be onboard with our vision and hope to continue on our original path with some slight alterations. We might not get around to gameification, but it's more important to have other functional features like drafts, friends, handwriting, and stickers.

What do you wish went differently?

What do you wish had gone differently / are there features you wish you hadn't made or made differently?

• Wish that the UI were a little more cohesive -- we will probably have to redo a lot because the screens are too distinct

Feedback

What feedback from last term do you think is relevant and interesting to incorporate. List your feedback broadly and label them with how they stack up for your vision. These may already be in ZenHub but after this discussion they should be.

tate notes: List of things to change on Figma: select font, recipient, theme screens add non-user button to select recipient home screen should use a stack instead of a carousel maybe eliminate mailbox and have different background maybe have button to flip mail or skip to bottom add in prototype UI for font creation now that we have an idea how it might work include prompt and instructions make some text more readable Sign up and Sign in screen differentiate and have new Qwill logo

technigala feedback: signup sheet at the end drafts / sent / displayed a less complicated UI with the profile

features to add: Take a users handwriting and create an accurate font representation We are likely going with a written approach, where users need to write out a paragraph Add fun elements such as stickers Either affixed to the borders or swipeable Create drafts/archive folders which are intuitive to users

• [critical 🔥]
  • Sharing via text with non-Qwill users
  • Friends functionality
  • Intuitive archiving
    • What happens after a user reads a letter?
    • How do we organize/display old letters?
  • Drafts
    • How do we display and access drafts?
  • AI custom fonts
    • Camera functionality
    • ML processing
  • Getting app to work on Expo Go (phone)
• [stretch goal 🍦]
  • Gamification
  • Stickers
  • Widget
• [rejected ⛔]
  • Graphic homepage style (no mailbox OR desk, just go Whatsapp route)

Questions

Think about where the project is headed. What are some questions that you/users/me have about direction/features/functionality that could use some validation?

• Should there be a limit on how many letters you can view on the home page? Or would a different stack style solve this problem?
• How many words are users willing to write to maximize AI custom fonts?
• What features, beside stickers, would make people actually willing to use the app?
• What features would facilitate the long-form/meaningful communication stuff?

Answers

Think of ways that you might validate these: discussion with your team, advice from me, polling the class, asking users, and/or collecting and analyzing usage data. Write down some ideas here. This isn't how to validate your project as a whole, but about specific feedback/features.

• Get our friends to use the app
• We can simulate the user experience ourself by testing the writing of paragraphs of different lengths; we can also evaluate the UI's success on different amounts of data to figure out the optimal word count to maximize the user experience both for onboarding but also for custom fonts
  • Also allow the user to write different length paragraphs

Vision

Refine your vision.

The vision is the same but we are prioritizing some of the key, defining features such as the customizable, syntehtic handwriting and stickers which we think people will really want.

WHERE THERE IS A QWILL THERE'S A QWAY.

Feedback Analysis

*How does the current feedback/user testing/progress change how you think about the direction of the project?

• It helps us eliminate some features that arent as relevant (or, to determine what exactly is important)
• Validated which parts of our app were fun/interesting.
• It helps us understand which parts of the UI are discordant or unintuitive

Pivot/Adjustment

If you were to consider a pivot or adjustment in what the product is, what would it be?

• Focusing more on the long form aspect of the communication: delayed sending.
• Focusing on displaying letters and quicker easier access of letters.

Ideal Goal

In an ideal world if you could build out your project to be anything without any constraints of time or skill what would you want to do? Dream big — you can do more than you think. Try to push the limits. This does not commit you to anything, so don't worry about overpromising, this is to get you dream about where you really want your project to go without constraints. Please don't skimp on this part.

• Take a users handwriting and create an accurate font represenation
  • Have stylistic alternative letters for variation
• Add fun elements such as stickers
• Add gamification
• Create drafts/archive folders which are intuitive to users

Mission Statement

Now write a mission statement for your project as you see it after all of this great brain activity. Just a few sentences suffices.

To promote thoughtful, long form digital communication through letter sharing with custom handwriting, fonts, and stickers.

How to get there

Now that you've thought about where your project is headed and where you want it to go write down how might approach getting there.

• Meet weekly on Saturday
• Prioritize critical features

What are your concrete next steps?

prompt users to make letters edit carousel:

• tappable arrows
• or just make it into a vertical stack

archive

• should we archive immediately after reading a letter?
• what is the flow for viewing and sorting the archive within friends?

home page

• mailbox and carousel is confusing -- try getting stack view to work
• maybe just take away the mailbox entirely and do a WhatsApp type of thing with a blurred picture background that you can change in settings

stickers and images

• camera
• location sharing (stamp from a certain place would be very cute, just like on a real letter)
• selfie stamp
• stickers transparent or swiped away, touch and drag, bounce around the screen

What are some blockers in your way?

• Writing code for making fonts is hard
• There are some features which are difficult to place in the app -- for example, where to put the stickers adding in the compose stack

TeamWork

*lastly, at the end of last term in the term summary you did a bit of work around teamwork. this is just a reminder for everyone to revisit that and if you have any new or further thoughts after the break feel free to record them here

Everyone should remember to keep up to date with the Slack. Ask for help if you're stuck. Communicate if you don't think you can get something done.

[nataliesvoboda]

cohesive UI is such a good challenge - let's chat more but essentially you can use a style guide with components to your benefit so the front end comes together smoothly.