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Client: Bloc
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Role: Product Designer
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Date: March 2019
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Team: Me + Design Peer
Galaxy
Galaxy optimizes online data storage and organization. Save links, organize intelligently, and customize organizational needs.
The Problem
Popular online file storage services lack features that would optimize file organization. Users cannot visually display their files in multiple ways, limiting their ability to look through their assets efficiently. Users cannot create repositories of links alongside files. Other services with more features lack affordable bulk storage.
Competitive Analysis
Google Drive
Controls a huge market share of cloud storage due to their inexpensive data plans, integrated email, and document creation. Google Drive is not geared towards displaying files. Users cannot add links as items/objects. Users cannot use tags, colors, or any file managing that optimizes your ability to find files.
Social media space for creating mood boards. It’s not for storing bulk files or organization. It’s very visual and primarily used for creating collections of pictures for thematic visual concepts.
Dropmark
Visual file and link storage website similar to Google Drive. The amount of storage space you can buy is poor value compared to Google Drive. File organization and collaboration is a key to their brand's usefulness. The user can upload links and treat them like an item. Dropmark's paid plan provides a feature that lets users view their files & links in different layouts, as well as annotating and other collaborative features.
Survey Key Takeaways
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Most people use cloud storage, primarily Google Drive and Dropbox.
Most pictures are uploaded and viewed on social media applications.
People like accessing their files from anywhere on all devices.
Many people do not sort their files, it’s tedious and difficult in cloud storage.
Most people save their links as bookmarks.
Of those surveyed, 42.9% pay $1-10, and 14.3% pay $11-20.
Personas
I chose an art director and a stay at home father. Workplace file organization is useful to both managers and employees to access important company files and links. The father can collaborate on files with his family. Other users could be teachers, students, and artists.
User Stories
The first needs users will have are a place to safely log in to and
a repository for all their files. This is the product at its core, cloud storage.
Now, what makes Galaxy special? Tagging is a huge feature that sets
Galaxy apart. It's something Google Drive hasn't adopted yet. Adding
bookmarks is a similar unique feature that Google Drive lacks.
Permissions are important for sharing your files, and to do that grouping into folders or "boards" are needed so a group of assets can be shared at once.
High Importance
• New users need to sign up
• Returning users want to log in
• All users want to upload their files
Medium Importance
• All users want to tag files
• All users want to add bookmarks
• All users want to set permissions for sharing
• All users add notes to files
• All users group files and links together
• All users view their files multiple ways
Low Importance
• All users want smart tagging
• All users create a profile
• Returning users edit their profile
• All users want bulk uploads
• All users want to sync folders from their desktops
• All users want to customize file icons
Login User Flows
Design changes
Added a landing page and a marketing page, to increase new user sign-on. New users can be reticent to hand over emails and information. The upgrades page was how Galaxy Cluster would be monetized. I wanted the first thing users to see to be stylistic and explain the product, driving them to sign up.
Testing
Several rounds of testing changed Galaxy greatly.
Testing is so vital, and the closer your prototype is to a clean finished product the easier it is to get higher level feedback from testers.
Low-Fi to Hi-Fi
• The landing page needs a better call to action, "Organize!" is not clear enough.
- Changed to just log in and sign up.
• Upload area too large.
- Moved the upload area to a pop-up screen that is activated with a button click.
• Design elements are too large.
- reduced text and button sizes.
• Social logins first felt like an uncommon design pattern
- Moved social logins to the right side.
• Change "sign-in" to "log in" for clarity.
• The landing page needs more content to bring in new users.
- I combined the upgrade page and the landing page to make it look more full.
• The buttons need to be more obvious.
- added tooltips to resolve.
Next Round of Tests
• Buttons need more padding.
- reduced font size to prevent elements from getting too large again.
• We need to split the upgrade screen and the landing page screen for better user flow.
- after the split, those pages looked and flowed much better.
• Need to add back button from login/sign up back to the landing page.
- Galaxy logo click takes you back to the previous screen.
• Add a checkbox in the corners of files for easier file selection.
• Editing the thumbnails/icons feature is too complex to add to a minimum viable product.
- fully removed.
• Add ability to change board "styles", this is a major selling point of Galaxy Cluster conceptually.
• Needs scroll bar to indicate more files can be seen.
- added a scroll bar
• We need to increase the appeal of signing up via more marketing on the landing page.
- More opportunities for onboarding added to the landing page.