WABI-SABI

Problem Space

Our memories shape who we are - comprising our stories, identities, and what we have done. Losing memories due to age “can represent a loss of self,” according to Harvard Health Publishing on memories. 

Morgan Barense, Ph.D., Professor and Canada Research Chair Max and Gianna Glassman Endowed Chair in Neuropsychology, showed a strong connection between missing memories and diminished emotional well being. “Positive reminiscence is linked to all sorts of good outcomes in terms of emotional well-being.” A study by the Florida State University on the connection between their sense of purpose and the richness of their memories found that personal memories “help us to set goals, control emotions, and build intimacy with others,  as well as “help people to sustain their well-being, social connections, and cognitive health.”

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Problem Background  

Given the great benefits of creating memories, there is not a platform that encourages people to make “creating memories” a part of their daily routine and motivates them to live, experience, and tell their stories.  

Despite the many benefits social media platforms have to offer, research has shown the impact of increased peer pressure and the need to conform and fit in among people, especially among teenagers and young adults. The question is, “How can we create a platform where the users can tell their stories in the most authentic ways without having to add filters or spend two hours coming up with a caption because they need to be considered “cool, fun, etc.” for their audience?” 

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Research Insights & User Pain Points

After conducting secondary research, such as gaining insights from research articles and performing a competitive analysis of current products on the market, we understood more about the context and the growing need for ways to connect better with others. We conducted user interviews to gather more user insights and understand what our users' pain points are. 

From our interviews, we discovered the following user pain points:

• Users only create new memories when they visit new places or have new experiences
• Users are not reminded about a past memory until it comes up in a conversation
• Many use a variety of different methods to share memories (photo, video, etc) with family and friends such as email, Google Drive, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc
• They find it difficult to search for a specific memory 
• Creating new memories often meant having less storage space 

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Feedback

After consolidating the qualitative data from our user interviews and seeing patterns through affinity mapping, we noticed the main theme of motivation as a topic that came up consistently among our users. There needs to be intentionality behind the decision to initiate and create new memories with other people. Based on this feedback, we decided to focus on the storytelling of memories since our users emphasized greatly how they enjoy talking about and sharing the stories behind past memories with their loved ones. 

This feedback allowed us to create a product that encourages users to consistently tell and share their stories behind a chosen memory. 

The following are the focus points for the MVP: 

• A memory entry template to guide users with organization and structure
• Daily question prompt cards
• Upload photos + write a story requirement
• Character minimum for user stories
• Share photos with the public
• A photo upload size under 10MB
• Store and organize memories

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Solution Explanation

Lofi & Hifi Mockups

• Lofi Mockup:

• Hifi Mockup: 

Iterative Design Learnings

After we showcased our prototype to users, we learned that:

• Users are confused with how to navigate from the home page to creating a memory entry
• The discover page icon does not make sense to the users
• There is no confirmation provided to the users once they completed a memory entry
• The date number on the photo preview in the memory page is confusing to users
• Users can only access their profile from the home page which may not be very accessible

From the user feedback, we made new changes to our design to ensure that we create the best user experience in our MVP. 

The following are the design changes:

1. Add copy to the home page to guide users to click on the question card to create a memory entry
2. Change the discover icon to a people icon so users know the page is for connecting with others
3. Give feedback to users once a memory is saved successfully
4. Remove the date on the photo preview
5. Use consistent formatting for the memory and favorites page
6. Add access to the user profile on all main pages

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Implementation Details

Technical implementation

Where is it hosted? Vercel (Front-end) and Heroku (API + Database)
What is your tech stack? Ruby on Rails and Next.js
High level journey of a request: Our product utilizes our in-house API for both authentication and other requests (saving a new memory, fetching all memories). This makes it very reliable and easy to monitor/update and responses are typically delivered between 100ms to 2s

Technical challenges

What was the hardest part of development? Translating some of the UI designs into actual code. There were certain functionalities that required learning new tools and methods.

Does your app have any scaling issues? None for now, our cloud storage for storing images currently has a 25GB monthly limit, which would be enough for hundreds of users because we limit our users to have one image entry per memory and a size limit of 10mb

What are some key takeaways? Working in a team requires patience, constant learning, and openness to feedback

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Future Steps

We will be continuing the project, and the goal is to launch the product (version 1) by the end of 2022.

Once the MVP is finished, we will regroup and discuss feasible features we can develop in the next two months.