simpler social media management for everyone

SUMMARY

MASLOW

User Experience design & Branding

Maslow’s is an application that will simplify social media management for Small business owners and Influencers. Maslow does this by providing a centralized interface to all their social media networks and analytics for their scheduled posts, audience engagement, and advertising management.

Design Role

  • UX Design
  • Visual Design
  • Branding & Identity

Deliverables

  • User Surveys
  • Personas
  • User Stories & Flows
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Paper Prototype
  • Wireframes
  • User Testing
  • Visual Design

Tools

  • Sketch
  • InVision
  • Photoshop
  • Usability Hub
  • Maze
View Invision Prototype View coded Prototype View redlines
OVERVIEW

Problems

  1. 1. Users are required to go to each social media account to post.
  2. 2. It may be tough to pull the analytics from each account making it hard to track/monitor post success and retweets.
  3. 3. it can be difficult to schedule posts and then edit them for each network.

Insights

People want to know who is looking at their posts and who is clicking on their links. They wish to curate posts that better engage with their followers.

Solutions

  1. 1. Introduce a clean feeds screen.
  2. 2. create simple flow for posting to multiple social media sites and edit each.
  3. 3. make tags easier to utilize.
  4. 4. create a clean scheduler.
PROCESS

Assumptions

There are generally three types of people… but for this project there are so many more:

  1. 1. The people that just want to post everything to all of their networks in one flow;
  2. 2. The people that want to connect with their readers and followers more;
  3. 3. The people who want to customize posts for each network while making sure they have an increase in followers and likes;
  4. 4. The people are curious about who sees their posts but really doesn’t care who follows them or likes their content; and
  5. 5. The business who want to track link clicks, user and do all of the above.

I happen to be the fourth type of person. Over the years, I have used any social media networks; some stayed around while others fizzled. When idea arose to create a site that could make using all social media sites easier I jumped on board! I think everyone can agree that any process made simple is one they will use more.

User Research

57%

of people want to insights about what the analytics data means and how to implement.

57%

want to be able to respond to users quicker and easier.

43%

want to monitor keywords and hashtags.

71%

said not having a clean dashboard would be a deal breaker.

50%

of users want to track who their posts engage with most.

29%

want to see all of their feeds on one screen.

* Percentages based on 22 user responses

User Personas

persona image

Melissa

A 24 Y/O Influencer

Goals

I want to be able to save drafts for posts so that I can edit them until I’m ready to post so that I can make sure I’m creating content that is not only engaging but also what my readers are expecting.

“ Empowering people is great. I just wish I could impact more people.”

Frustrations

My readers expect that I post content regularly, but I need and deserve days off too! I need a way to see what I haven’t responded also; sometimes I only have time to read a comment or I have so many notifications from one account that I forget to check-in with another account.

persona image

John

A 30 Y/O Business Owner

Goals

I want to connect with my clients as much as possible by creating engaging content schedules. But I’m a business too so I also need to know who my content is appealing too and how I can optimize that.

“ I don’t feel like I ever have time to truly connect with my clients. But maybe if my content was better tailored that would be okay ”

Frustrations

It can be impossible to know which social media platforms my campaigns are doing best on or who they are really resonating with.

Competitive Analysis Highlights

The Social media management industry is full of new and old companies all fighting for the same clients. One of the most significant complications will be getting established, like Buffer; it can be hard to stand out in an industry with monsters like Sprout Social- that is a younger company that better at analytics than their older more trusted competitors- or HootSuite that is one of the oldest and most trusted SMM apps.

Check out the full compentive Analysis here

User flows & User stories

Based on the information gathered from the surveys, and competitive analysis I created user stories to highlight the main features of the product. The user stories were then converted into User flows done in Sketch, to illustrate how the user would interact with the product and accomplish those goals.

Check out user stories broken down into flows here and all of the flows as one here
Phase 2

Branding

I wanted the logo to encompass all of what Maslow could do - so I started with the “M.” Then thought about how Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a hierarchy pyramid which can also be a triangle. Last I added the element of a graph or chart, for this instance I used a pie chart.

see more

Logo Design

logo sketches
color palette

Color Palette

Created in a way that will allow users to choose between light, medium or dark interface. The accent colors are softened but bright; they pop out when used on both light and dark backgrounds. They should be used sparingly to create a little more of a fun tone.

font choices

Fonts

Karla is a humanist sans serif typeface with a quirky feel. Designed with upright stress, open forms, and a neutral, yet friendly appearance. It has excellent legibility characteristics in its letterforms.

Wireframes & Testing

Low Fidelity Wireframes

With my user stories and flows in place, I can begin sketching with paper.

wireframe sketches low fidelity wireframes

When the wireframes were done, I was able to test them with a few people to collect some early feedback.

A&B Testing

Which screen would you prefer as the default Post Schedule View page?

plain signin page

30%

of users liked because it is a
“detailed view, but not as overwhelming.”

galaxy signin page

40%

of users liked this screen over the other because it makes it easy “see the whole week clearly.”

galaxy signin page

30%

of users liked this screen over the other because it is “easier to get a feel for a brief overview of when everything was happening and if I want to see more, then I'd click on the other options.”

User testing

The video below is a remote usability test I conducted where the user was asked to do three tasks - post something, learn about their users/followers, and edit a sceduled post. Zach was one of three people who were chosen from the user surveys, as their responses in the survey represented a primary user, and they mentioned that they are open to additional questions.

When the High fidelity wireframes were done, I was able to test them with a few people to collect some more feedback. Most of the comments were about how it may be confusing to add a document so made some last changes to the visual design bellow.

When the High fidelity wireframes were done, I was able to test them with a few people to collect some more feedback. In testing, I found that people didn’t realize they had to select the networks they wanted to post too. They instead assumed they were all selected. So I made the iterations below.

In testing, this version people were able to post a lot easier and quicker. But! They were confused by the “post” button and the drop-down next to it. Oh and some people wanted the colors to be more consistent and not relate to the social network.

In testing this version was silver! Because there are always improvements that can be made. But people didn’t have any issues posting, and they were able to differentiate between the drop down and the post button

Final Product

Final Product

Lets put all of that branding and user testing to work.

Product Features

Simpler Posting

With a post option on the dashboard, side bar and in the posts page posting is always easy. The social media networks you post most often will be auto-selected - but you can deselect them or add others as needed.

Customize your post for each network - just in case you want to post Instagram but don’t want to add a photo to the facebook post.

Analyze Post Performance

Track engagement and interactions on the posts you've shared, so you can see how your content is performing across all your social accounts.

Gain Insights

Learn what your followers are looking at and what they want to see more of.

product screens for sharing
product screens for creating documents and content

Connect

When you hover over posts, all of the icons for commenting and engaging are right there. You can also view all of your comments in your inbox for comfortable responding.

Schedule Posts

Keep your social presence active—even when you’re not, with Maslow’s scheduling features.

Schedule your posts manually or set up a post queue and watch your posts publish as often as you choose.

View Invision Prototype View coded Prototype View redlines

Conclusion

People want to connect with as many people as they can.

There are already some big companies in the social media management industry. Buffer does posting flawlessly, hoot-suite is a trusted industry giant and sprout social is any power users playground. But people want a good medium between all of these excellent options that aren’t expensive. Not to mention we all need to give our eyes a break so a dark theme would be welcomed by most. Maslow combines a super clean layout with all of the impressive features people like and want.

Maslow isn’t perfect. No app ever is though. In my last round of user testing, I found that the “Post” button was still a bit confusing and it was unclear if the drop-down menu should have a traditional arrow or be a timer/clock/calendar icon. Then some of the titles need to be reworked, and of course, I’d need to do some most testing to figure out which analytic data is most important to users and move those tiles around. You know all of the small details - but I plan on making these updates so Stay Tuned.

LESSON Learned

With this project there were many ups and downs - Like I can’t express how many graphs I had to look at and research to figure out the best way to show data. It was so much fun - sometimes overwhelming too. I can’t tell you what all of the graphs are called, but I can say data is so complicated and I have so much respect for designers that work with more complex data [ or any data visualizations].

Lastly, I learned that it is more important to have finished “good enough” project than an unfinished “perfect” project.