Aligning user understanding

In order to contribute, users need to understand the product. How might we better communicate how Pointz differs from leading mapping apps?

For users to contribute, it was crucial that they understand how Pointz differs from conventional navigation apps. After conducting user interviews, I discovered that some users had misconceptions about how data was crowdsourced, assuming it was primarily passive.

To bridge this gap, I recommended a redesign of the onboarding flows. The existing onboarding flows explained the functionality of individual elements in the UI but did little to explained how the app worked at a high level. Over a two and a half week period, I reimagined the Pointz onboarding flows using custom JSON animations I created in After Effects.

Balancing contribution and value

While the product relies on crowdsourced data, it needs to bring palpable value to users. How might we integrate crowdsourcing in such a way that users feel as though they are getting more out of the app than they’re putting in?

Because Pointz’s competitive advantage depends on crowdsourced data, it was vital to strike a balance between encouraging user contribution while delivering value to users.

Similar products often use gamification to persuade users—a strategy Pointz had previously attempted to nominally integrate into their crowdsourcing stragey. User interviews, however, revealed that elective user contribution was overhwelmingly driven by a motivation to help others, rather than game mechanics.

To address this challenge, I leveraged strategic copywriting in the design of crowdsourcing success messages. By emphasizing community and impact, I motivated users to contribute while ensuring they felt that they were getting more out of the app than they put in. I also designed user flows that made contribution accessible, convenient, and natural, without ever making it feel expected, required, or solicited.

Elegantly accomodating varying levels of user investment

Users vary considerably in their willingness to provide data. How might we design a crowdsourcing experience that allows for contribution at varying levels of investment in terms of time and effort?

Through user testing and interviews, I discovered that some users were quite willing to complete extensive crowdsourcing flows with detailed questions, while others showed a strong preference for flows requiring minimal time and effort.  If a crowdsourcing experience were designed to solely reflect the preferences of the latter group of users, those users willing to provide more data would be precluded from doing so—prematurely “capping” the crowdsourced data Pointz could collect.

To respond to this issue, I sought to design a crowdsourcing experience that elegantly accommodated varying levels of user investment in terms of time and effort. To do so, I introduced an additional low-investment tier in the crowdsourcing experience. This tier involved a non-disruptive toast with a straightforward multiple-choice question about the quality of the route, allowing users to contribute to the dataset with minimal effort. This approach ensured that users seeking a quick and easy contribution experience were accomodated without setting a low ceiling on the amount of data users were able to contribute.