Redesigning the mobile experience for an “All in One” super app
A UI/UX Case study on redesigning of My Galaxy mobile application for Samsung users.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information and content are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of My Galaxy.
About My Galaxy?
My Galaxy is a unique “All in One” super app that gives access to free videos, music, games, and news exclusively for Samsung devices in India.
My Galaxy also provides a unique variety of Samsung services like - Samsung Upgrade, Samsung Members, Samsung Care, Samsung Protect, etc. It also caters to its users with a customized experience of services ranging from Coupons & Deals to booking Flight tickets.
Design Challenges
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A refreshing approach in redesigning the Home page to increase discoverability and giving structure for all the different variety of contents in the application.
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Increasing user engagement and adding personalization to the application.
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Creating or building a habit formation for the users.
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To give a more cohesive experience for all Samsung users keeping consistency with Samsung design language and My Galaxy brand identity.
My Role
I was a part of six members' design team and was associated with the team from the start to the delivery of the project. I also led a small team during the visual design phase.
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Requirement gathering and meetings with different stakeholders.
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Collaboration during Research and Interview.
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User experience and interface design.
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Wireframing, Prototyping, and final Visual Design.
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Motion & Interactions.
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Collaboration with the development team.
My Design Process
We took different design approaches in the team to solve the problem, but for this case study, I am detailing the UX design process in 6 stages, which I followed in my approach.
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Discuss
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Research
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Analyze
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Concept & Sketches
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Design
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Delivery
DISCUSS
Understanding the Requirements
We had an open-ended discussion with a few of our stakeholders (Product Owners, Business Partners, Product Managers, Marketing Head) and tried to highlight what are the key challenges that they are trying to solve from the business or brand point of view.
We then tried to understand what are the pain-points of the users. What issues or problems are we trying to solve for your user?
But, for any design project to be successful, you need these two areas to be in tune; Users and Business Goals. Thus, we needed to align this project with our user requirements and pain- points, to our product’s mission and business goals.
RESEARCH
Insights into the Problem
After gathering the requirements we dived further into understanding the core problems that were to be solved. We then conducted the following research process to further validate and understand the problem.
User Interview & Focus Group
We conducted a quick session of user interviews to gather our primary research. We got a chance to talk directly to some of the users (5) who had used or are using My Galaxy application. I was a part of 2 member team, who were involved in the process.
We also conducted a one-hour session of close Focus groups with 5 avid users for the application (internal employees), for further understanding their pain-points and frustrations. We had a good session of discussion and got great insights into the current application and its functioning.
Competitive Benchmarking & Secondary Research
We did a quick benchmarking on some of the existing applications which were more in line with our product proposal. There were a number of applications that were working on the same line or had some features similar to our application.
We also looked for other sources for our secondary research on the internet to understand more how the Home page should be re-designed (Articles, Blogs, Design system, etc).
I also went through other sources such as Medium, UX Planet, UX Collective, and UX Planet to gather more insights into the latest trends and updates. I referred Muzli, Pinterest, Behance, Dribble and Google Material Design for visual inspiration and later used some for creating a Moodboards.
Key Findings from the Research
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Users were more eager to scroll and look for trending content on a daily basis (Videos and Music).
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Most of them wanted a carefree or mindless scrolling of the page similar to some social media apps like Instagram or Facebook. Habituated to basic gestures like swipe and scroll.
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Featured or promoted content such as IPL or cricket updates, new movie trailers, new albums, viral videos, top news, social media veins, fashion trends, and tabloid news were essential to keep users engaged.
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Our services and promotional offers (coupons and discounts) were not that important for users, unlike we expected.
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Users looking for daily engagement with the app needed very basic delights to help them perform simple tasks such as know about their horoscope, reminders for drinking water, talk to My Assistant for information, etc.
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There was a need for a personalized section for the user with content which was more towards their interest and liking. Creating a Habit.
ANALYZE
Deriving meaningful patterns and identifying opportunity areas
After conducting a semi-structured process of research using qualitative and quantitative sources, we were able to gather a good amount of data. These data points were further diverged and then later converged to get meaning full patterns.
Objectives:
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Why are users using or not using My Galaxy application?
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Identify user pain-points, needs, aspirations, emotions, goals and motivations.
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What are users looking for in the application?
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When are the users using the application?
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How are users interacting with the application?
I used some of the methods like Affinity Mapping, creating Archetypes and Personas, User Journey Map, Brainstorming and Ideating.
Affinity Mapping
All the data collected were organized to understand and identify some of the common patterns in the users and their behavior through the Affinity Diagram. This helped us to further understand the pain-points, goals, aspirations, motivations, and needs of the users.
Archetypes and Personas
From our research, we derived three Archetypes. Creating Archetypes and Personas helped us to better understand our users. This became a reference point to make decisions whenever we think of building something for the users.
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Quick and Easy — Users who want to quickly consume content and want to keep it really simple and easy.
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Grand and Loyal — Users who are loyal to Samsung as a brand and aspire to look for convenient ways to access premium content and offers.
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Explore and Track — Users who look for external triggers like offers or notification, and compare content and experience with other service providers.
User Journey Mapping & Brainstorming
We then tried to map all these touchpoints with our personas and made a User Journey Map. This allowed us to understand what users did, how they did it, why they did it, what were their emotional response at the time, what were the pain points?
We divided our findings into four phases, Explore, Discover, Consume and Repeat.
Brainstorming allowed us to further dive deeper and identify the specific opportunity areas.
Opportunity Areas
In the stages of Explore and Discover, I found multiple possibilities for the improvement of different features. It was evident that the improvement in these areas will certainly improve the user experience.
Some of the opportunity areas in stages of Consume and Repeat were good to be taken into account to further add user delight and engagement. This would increase our user retention and serve well for returning users.
We further grouped our approach into four main categories:
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User Engagement
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Quick and Fast Actions
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Human Connection
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Visual Design
CONCEPT & SKECHES
Design Mantra
To start my process of conceptualization I needed to have a strategic approach. I came up with a design mantra to keep a consistent and uniform understanding of how to approach any given problem.
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Simple
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Interactive
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Delightful
Wire-frames and Sketches
I then started with a pen and paper to give our thoughts and ideas shape. We looked around our opportunity areas to come up with smart and quick ideas. We later converted these paper wireframes into quick low-fidelity wireframes.
Moodboard
We started our design by creating a mood board with assembling all the related and relevant images online. We took inspirations from Dribble, Pinterest and Behance for this particular section because these places have great design collection.
DESIGN
User flow
Once all the features and functionality were finalized, we concentrated our effort on structuring our application. User Flow was done at this stage to define and structure out all the new and existing features on the home page.
High-Fidelity mockups
We designed these high-fidelity mockups in Sketch software and used the Crystal app to preview these designs on our test devices.
DELIVERY
Final Designs
There were many approaches that we took in order to solve the problems that were categorized into these four groups.
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User Engagement
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Quick and Fast Actions
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Human Connection
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Consistent Visual Language
