CIRCLES
Circles is an interaction exploration, exploring the different ways people fidget and play with their phones paralleled with learning how users interact with social media.
MY ROLE
UI/UX, Visual, Interaction
YEAR
Spring, 2017


INTRO
Social media giants employ the use of algorithms to determine what content
to show you, but they often fail to show the content that we really care about
So you've scrolled your day away on social media, and somehow missed all your friend's social media content...
Social media feeds are muddled with content that we don't care about, and are too lazy to unfollow, and the content that we do care about gets buried beneath it.
GOALS
Connect
Empower users to connect with their friends' and family's content
Efficiency
Provide instant access tou00a0social media content, eliminating the time consuming need to manually search or scroll indefinitelyu00a0
Meaningful Interaction
Play with and explore different interactions that users can perform to access a group's content
UI PATTERN
Friend List
Give users a meaningful way to interact with their friends
UI PATTERN
Categorization
Enable users to curate their social media viewing experience by creating custom groups
PERSUASIVE PATTERN
Conceptual Metaphor
Mimic the idea of a rotary dial, helping users make associations within
the app
PERSUASIVE PATTERN
Chunking
Help users make sense of the content by giving them the option to sort the social media content
FEATURES
I iterated through a variety of interactions, playing with how users access a specific
group's social media content in this social media aggregator that seeks to thwart algorithms
INTERACTION 1
Rotary Dial
Drawing inspiration from dialing on a rotary phone, drag the group you want to enter around the circle and release after full revolution to view that group's social media content


INTERACTION 2
Pull Dot
Drag the group that you want to enter to the middle circle and release to gain access to their content


INTERACTION 3
Push Dot
Push the center dot to the group you want to enter and release to gain access


FEED
Group's Feed
Users can decide what type of content they want to see with this curated social media browsing experience that is sorted chronologically


DESIGN PROCESS
I became intimately acquainted with the UX design process. From user research to
information architecture to wireframes and look and feel, I pulled it all together
to create the final product


I used sketching as my primary tool to iterate through possible interactions
I rapidly wireframed to organize my base structure so that I could
begin playing with interactions


CONCLUSION
Through this project, I got to experience and learn from a rapid design
approach to a project
SPRINT
I learned the value of designing rapidly so that I could fail fast, validate designs quickly, and kill my darlings that didn't best solve the solution
Intentional Friction
The act of searching for and viewing someone's social media content is an intentional act, and I wanted to honor that intention by creating interactions that have intentional friction
Interested in a deeper look at how I got to the final solution? Check out my process documentation to see everything from research to our final product