Competitive analysis is done by collecting information on direct and indirect competitors such as their values, URL of site or app, device compatibility, target user base, year founded, primary categories, social networks, content types, and personalization features. general user features, competitive advantage, region, heuristic evaluation, customer reviews, cost, and finally the analysis of the product. Three direct competitors are identified including Goodnotes, Notability, and Apple Notes. Three indirect competitors are Evernote, Milanote, and Bear. During the competitive analysis I mainly focus on the research for Goodnotes and Bear. My other team members work on the others.
With the results from the competitive analysis, an UX strategy is written, including the executive summary, introduction and goals, direct competitors, indirect competitors, and overall recommendation. The competitors that are closest to delivering a similar value proposition to our product are Goodnotes, Notability, and Evernote. The competitors that directly appeal to our customer segment are Goodnotes and Notability. Most of the customers most likely discover them through recommendation with consideration of cost, efficiency, and need. Milanote and Bear offer the best user experience with clean and easy to use interface and similar features. Bear has the best business model of low cost yearly subscription for professionals. Goodnotes has the best business model for students for being a low cost one time payment. Users like the good organization with Milanote and Bear. They like the low cost of Goodnotes. Integration of other professional platforms through Evernote. Real time team collaboration using Milanote.
With the results from the competitive analysis and the recommendation from the UX strategy, The team created three persona with different characteristics and goal. I mainly focused on creating the persona for the art student who like to take notes creatively and more graphical.
Customer journey maps were created for each persona mimicking the potential thought process and emotions of an user as they went through the process of finding and using a note-taking application. I also mainly focusing on creating the journey map of the art student Mina.
Goal 1: Users wants to be able to find their notes quick through having a good organization feature that allows them to create custom folders/categories
Goal 2: User wants to be able to name their own notes with their own naming conventions
Goal 3: Users want to see the time and date that the notes is created/edited
Goal 4: With the notes itself, the user wants to have the capability to add title, sub headings, and be able to make important information stand out through things like adding colors, highlighting, bullet, underline, sticky notes, drawing etc.
Goal 5: Users want to be able to find their notes using a search feature that helps them sort through their notes for the one that they are looking for.
With the goals of the product in mind, the team decided to do some research with potential user to get feedback on what they like the product to be like before starting to design the product. Interviews were conducted with five participants (students) from different majors including a Computer Graphics student, two Nursing students, a Visual Communication Design student, and a Psychic student. I conducted the interview for the two nursing students as well as the visual communication design student.
1. How do you take notes?
2. How do you search through your notes?
3. What type of notes do you take (digital or physical)?
- If digital, what application do you use to take digital notes?
- Why do you like those application(s)?
- Do you use the search features within those applications?
- If yes, do you like it and why?
4. What classes do you take note for?
- Do your notes differ between classes?
After doing a simple/not so formal convenient research by looking at different students’ notes and asking questions relating to how they take notes, how they search for information within their notes, what type of notes they take (digital or physical), if digital, what applications they use and why they like it (and if they like the search within those application), and what type of classes do they take notes in (if yes how the notes differ).
We notice that most of the students took physical notes instead of digital notes, mainly because the action of physically writing notes helps them memorize their notes better than typing it. Even when taking digital notes they preferred using a stylus when given the chance. Out of the two students that took digital notes (Goodnote 5 & Google Doc), we also noticed that most of the students do not use search bars when looking for their notes. They prefer being able to organize their notes through folders, naming conventions, and dates. Having a good organization helps them find their notes better than using a search bar.
The product consisted of a tablet as well as a mobile version of the note-taking app. I mainly created the wireframes for the mobile version of the application as well as the landing screen of the tablet view. I included the wireframes that I did for the project below.
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The team decided to keep the design and color minimal so the overall color of the app is white for background, black text, and light grey for contrast. Other colors are used for different folders as well as for users to use themselves when creating notes. The font choice is san-serif, Inter.
The high-fidelity prototype is created using Figma. I worked on most of the setup and heuristics of the prototype as well as the interactive components. Below are some examples of the recent screen, search result screen, as well as the note screen in both the tablet & mobile view.
