OVERVIEW

Challenge

Select an Indian application and redesign it to provide a simple and useful user experience.

I choose hike. It is the fastest-growing Indian app to become a unicorn (with a valuation of more than $1B). It had quite a lot of near-death experiences - but has managed to grow rapidly, almost beyond expectations every time and stay afloat in a very challenging space.

Understanding Hike as a company

Hike is a cross-platform instant messaging, Voice over IP, social media and peer-to-peer file sharing application which was launched on 12 December 2012. It allows users to share text and voice messages in real-time when connected to the internet as well as by SMS when offline.

Hike attained a valuation of $1 billion in 3.7 years flat after being founded. This is marginally faster than other Indian unicorns, Inmobi and Ola, which took 4 years each. India’s highest valued startup, Flipkart, took 5 years. 

Why redesign now ?

Where can I go wrong ?

Hike tried to create a super app that provided all possible services, including shopping on online marketplaces, booking cabs, ordering food online, online payments etc -- all hinged on an in-app wallet. But turns out it makes the user interface confusing and lead the users to start using other social media and online messaging platforms.

I don't want to introduce too many new features. As hike already dumps its one-app-fits-all approach. So, I need to make sure to keep the user interface simple and pleasing to use.

Redesign scope

RESEARCH

User Research and Data

User Interviews, Affinity Diagramming, Empathy Mapping, Persona, Jobs to be done

User Interviews

I conduct a quick semi-structured interview with people around me. By performing interviews, I learnt why and how people use social media.

1. why do you use social media ?

2. What brings you back to any social media platform after using it once ?

3. What do you love about hike ?

4. What do you hate most about hike ?

5. What makes you choose other social media platforms over hike ?

6. what do you like about other social media platforms ?

Affinity Diagramming

I did affinity diagramming to organize my research findings into categories that would help me digest all these pieces of information efficiently.

Empathy Mapping

Visualizing user attitudes and behaviours in an empathy map helps us align on a deep understanding of end-users. The mapping process also reveals any holes in the existing design.

Personas

After Analyzing the data collected from research , I created two personas that represent my target users for the app.

Jobs to be done

This will help us understand the user’s motivations and expectations.

 DESIGN

Ideation & Design

Competitor analysis, Addressing pain points, Improvement opportunities, Priority matrix, Sketches, Wireframes, Visual design

Competitor Analysis

A competitive analysis is a great way to learn about standard practices, leading approaches, approaches to avoid for an app in this domain.

The more I looked into other social media platforms and researched other apps in my domain, the more I realized that using followers term instead of friends is the right way to go.

Addressing Pain Points

After identifying pain points directly from user quotes, I come up with common ones that users were having trouble with.

Improvement Opportunities

After identifying standard practices & leading approaches around social media platforms, I Brainstorm possible solutions.

Priority Matrix

Prioritization charts or matrices can help us base important decisions on objective, relevant criteria instead of subjective opinions.

Sketches

The main idea of sketching is to come up with the best solution to a problem. Sketching allows us to try out a multitude of ideas and iterate them before settling on one.

But before I start sketching, I need to keep in mind these design goals -

1. Need a screen where users can select the topics they like.

2. Need a screen where users can see the content based on the topics they choose.

3. Need a way that allows users to search for content by hashtags.

4. Need a way that allows users to keep their messages from contacts and followers in different sections.

5. Need a way that allows users to save the content they like.

6. Need a way to allow users to access the content they had saved.

My goal is to generate as many ideas as possible and choose the most promising ones.

Wireframes

Wireframing is used to define the hierarchy of items on a screen and communicate what the items on that page should be based on user needs.

UI Design

Slide To See Detailed UI View

Measuring success

Coming up with a solution doesn’t help much if we don't know how to measure its success. Now is the time to close the loop and define how we can validate the solution. To do that we need to ask ourselves a question. How would we know that the solution was successful?

1. Daily Active Users (DAU)

2. Monthly Active Users (MAU)

3. Daily Sessions Per DAU

4. Stickiness (DAU/MAU)

5. Likes/Comments/Shares Clicks

6. “Save” Button Clicks

Future steps

There are a lot of things that I thought about but didn’t have more time to develop as:

1. Allowing users to use hike web by scanning QR code.

2. Allowing users to use hike assistant while they are communicating with their friends.

3. Introducing In-app games that will allow users to live battle their friends.

4. Integrating stickers within the In-chat keyboard.

5. Allow users to send money to their friends through the app.

Assumptions

People are willing to give hike a try.

people are happy to explore other social media platforms.

Hike team members are willing to put awesome content on the app themselves in the beginning. This will encourage users to also put their content on the app. (Wizards of Oz).

Behind the scenes