Membook
design process
2019-2020 (Nanit Feature)
TL;DR
This is a breakdown of the design and research process I lead for the Membook feature in Nanit.
What started as a plan to add a feature for saving snapshots of the baby in the crib to the app, transformed into 'Membook', an auto-generated baby album.
Using Nanit's computer vision and machine learning abilities, the camera captures babies' sleep and developmental milestones and curates them into a baby book timeline in the app.
Collaborating with -
Product managers 👩💻👨💻
UX researcher 👩🔬
Development team: backend, iOS and Android 👩💻👨💻 ...7 ppl
Algorithms team 👨💻👨💻
Marketing team 👨💼👨💼👩💼
Role
Ideation
Research
UX Design
UI Design
Research
Map competitors and the market
Survey
User interviews and user testing with a prototype
Tools
Sketch
Invision prototype
asking questions
When I started working on this project, the goal and solution were pre-defined as follows:
Goal: motivate parents to share more videos from the Nanit app to social media.
Assumption: allowing parents to save favorite videos in the app would also drive them to share these videos outside of the app.
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I wondered where this goal came from and if the solution suggested would be effective.
I started by asking questions:
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Is this the real goal and KPI, or is there another hidden goal and measure for its success?
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How will this feature align with Nanit's vision to innovate baby monitors with computer vision?
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What is our unique positioning in this feature within the competitive environment?
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Who is our target audience for this feature?
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What would be the benefit for users?
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Would our users save videos in the app if they could? Why?
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Would saving videos in the app, in fact, drive users to share them outside of the app? Why?
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What are people's common habits for saving and sharing their baby’s photos?
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What does the online baby photo albums market look like?
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What is the business model of these other products? What is working / Not working for them?
establishing new assumptions
To answer these questions I reviewed popular photo album apps (for baby and for general photos), and social media apps. I then shared my findings with the product team in a presentation.
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Top initial findings
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Many apps focus on celebrating milestones.
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Common business models: in-app ads and custom production (printing etc).
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Technologically advanced photo platforms use data to highlight key content for users.
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There is a lot of competition.
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Team discussion conclusions:
To give high value for our users, that would align with Nanit’s vision, we can:
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Use our technology and data to automatically create content for our users.
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The content should focus on capturing milestones to give users a high value.
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New goal:
Help parents celebrate milestones that happen in the crib.
Automatically capture events of baby milestones in the crib for families to discover and celebrate.
New KPIs (how will we measure success):
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User engagement: Share, like, comment, upload photos, invite more users to the app.
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Conversion: Upgrade subscription.
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Retention: Parents keep using the feature after the baby has grown.
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Discussion with the development and algorithms teams:
We discussed this new direction with the dev and algorithms teams to make sure we are going in a feasible direction technologically, and with the Marketing team to make sure this feature would align with the marketing and sales strategy.
research
A. Survey
B. Competition analysis
C. Prototype and user interviews
A. User survey - Generative research
An important part of the process is to get to know the users' context.
We wanted to keep an open mind and find opportunities for solutions and innovation and to test our new hypothesis and understand if there's a true user need. To do that, we had to first learn more about how our users save and share their baby photos and videos, and how they interact with their babies' milestone events in real life.
With the help of the product manager and the UX researcher on the team, together we composed a survey asking about parent’s baby photo saving and sharing habits.
The survey was shared with Nanit users and was answered by over 1,200 parents.
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Key insights:
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Parents are much more likely to share and engage with their baby’s milestones events than ‘regular’ events.
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57% of our users don’t use any baby milestones tracking app (opportunity?).
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Parents have privacy concerns regarding their baby’s photos.
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Parents share baby content differently with close / extended circles of family and friends.
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Our users aren’t fully / at all aware they can control family privacy permissions in the app.
B. Competition analysis
Based on answers to the survey I could now know which products our target audience use to save and share their baby photos, and could now look at these products and create a more detailed comparison of the features they provided and their business model.
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Key insights:
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All competing products are dependent on the users uploading photos/videos (marks an opportunity for Nanit which can auto-generate the videos for parents).
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All arrange content on a timeline / allow to view by the time.
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Many provide content about milestones.
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All allowed inviting family members to view.
C. Users interview and test (Prototype)
It's crucial to test actual design with users, in reality, to learn if it is clear and useful to users. Based on these new key insights I made a design we could share as a prototype with users in interviews to hear their feedback.
To achieve this quickly I based the design on the app system design and on the UI already used for other ‘celebratory’ content in the app (like baby birthdays).
We selected 6 users who answered the survey and represented 3 personas:
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Type a: sharing baby photos is important to them and they do it frequently.
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Type b: somewhat interested in sharing their baby photos.
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Type c: not at all interested in sharing their baby photos.
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Key insights:
The interviews validated our KPI assumptions.
There is a high probability they would:
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Be engaged with this content.
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Invite more family members to view it.
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Pay to get more of this content.
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Keep using the app after the baby has grown.
Screens of the prototype captured during the user testing:
new feature plan
Design and content plan
A. Content plan
'Membook' will rely on the content generated by the algorithms and backend team.
We worked together to compose a content plan prioritized by what data and we already have and can use, and what content would require work to create.
B. UX flow
I designed mockups of all the touching points the feature will have in the app, and shared it in 'Freehand' by InVision so the product team could comment on the design, the flow included:
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Deciding where this new feature will live in the app.
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Re-designing the app navigation architecture (new navigation menu)
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Feed and timeline
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Save videos from other places in the app
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Notification on new events from Nanit
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Take snapshot from the crib to the photo gallery
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Photo gallery
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New invite flow
Some examples of UX sketches for Membook:
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The new page
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Invite family
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Take snapshot
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New photo gallery
C. UX for new navigation architecture
This new feature will live in a new page in the app.
Re-designing the app navigation architecture for a new page instead of the Settings:
D. UI design
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We divided the project to phases with the dev team.
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I started working on UI variations.
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We showed a few versions to the product, dev and marketing teams until a style was selected.
Feed and post UI example:
The auto-generated posts from Nanit are celebrated with animated illustrations.
Design compatible with social media
Since one of the goals of the Membook is sharing on social media, I adjusted the design with 'share' versions, compatible with social media posts and 'story' sizes.
Here, for example, is animal-themed illustrated posts for anniversaries (birthdays) with the share version:
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Impact on product positioning
In recent market research it was shown that Membook had a significant impact on the product positioning, with Membook hitting 2 out of the top 5 product selling points as 'reasons to buy' the Nanit camera:
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Capturing' 'first-times' achievements videos came in 2nd (!) place.
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An auto-generated baby book came in 5th place.
Feature Announcement
The Membook was announced in Jan 2020 at CES.
I made a prototype which the Marketing team could show visitors to the Nanit booth
(the UI design was not final and based on one of the old variations).
They also used this design to make a video to announce the feature:
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User feedback
Membook was accepted positively by our users.
After it was released we saw an increase in social media shares for videos from the app and positive mentions of the feature in reviews.
Parents share their Memories videos on social media:
A thread by parents on Reddit about the unexpected joy and humor of the morning pickups compilation: