case study - 2020
Mylio: managing memories simply within a complex ecosystem.
10,000 feet
I was the lead and solo UX designer (partnered with a visual designer and engineer) challenged to simplify the ongoing maintenance of Mylio, a photo management application, across iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows devices.
Spoiler alert: it worked.
It is estimated that 1.4 trillion photos will be taken in 2021. The vast majority of these photos will end up in a phone’s photo manager (Apple Photos or Google Photos) never to be seen again.
While Apple and Google make taking and storing photos beyond easy, they make organizing and maintaining photos nearly impossible. And the reason is obvious: making a system that grants control, privacy, and access is really complex.
Enter: Mylio.
Mylio is a photo manager that offers control, privacy, and access to those who want more than what Apple and Google Photos has to offer. But it is also endlessly complex with a huge feature set, difficult to parse technical jargon, and a learning curve so steep you’d need a Sherpa to get started.
It would be a true challenge to make Mylio more accessible to all.
But I was up for the challenge.
My Design Process
When designing for Mylio I follow the Nielson Norman Group’s (NNg) Design Thinking infrastructure. NNg acknowledges that this practice of human-centered design has been around for ages, but in the case of redesigning and simplifying a complex product, exploring solutions and understanding our user’s experiences with Mylio were vital.
Personas
First things first: who exactly is using Mylio and who would most benefit from simplification? Because I had spoken with thousands of users as the support lead of Mylio for 5 years, I had a sharp sense of who was using the product and, more importantly, not able to use it. These personas were the foundation of each decision made during this redesign.
User Stories (but better)
To ensure that people could perform specific actions in Mylio, I relied on the Job Stories concept in place of User Stories. Unlike User Stories, Job Stories make fewer assumptions about the user and put an emphasis on the motivation and outcome. This allowed me to focus on what types of scenarios users would likely want to resolve with a simplification.
Understanding Pain Points
Working with our support team and data specialist, I set out to make a comprehensive list of problems that users regularly ran into managing their Mylio set up.
The qualitative data from our support team manifested in simplifying the long-term management issues as this came from committed users.
Quantitative data set the stage for our early and high abandonment. We surfaces difficulties in properly getting set up and accomplishing the onboarding process for Mylio as well as difficulty in accessing Mylio's features.
Our quantitative data lead us to do a series of discussions with new users to understand where they got stuck and what their goals were when getting started.
As a result, I made an affinity chart that mapped issues that specific people were running into and how it affected their experience with Mylio.
With an understanding of the specific problems that could be addressed, the issues were charted to illustrate what areas would be the most impactful to improve against what Mylio would benefit from as a company overall.
The importance of specific fixes to users was gauged on the conversations I had previously as well as the frequency of the issue as reported by the support team. The importance of the feature to Mylio was inferred from Mylio's short and long term roadmap as well as our company goals and what we knew created long term, happy users.
Defining the Problems
To maximize the time spent on simplification I focused on the four areas of that were both important to the user and to Mylio. Below, I’ll walk through each pain point to specify the concerns.
Pain Point 1: Users are unsure of the first steps they should take when starting Mylio
When starting Mylio for the first time, the user is dropped into the application with little guidance on the steps that should initially be taken.
The tour that is offered is ineffective and gives a high-level overview of the app which is quickly forgotten.
Pain Point 2: Importing media initially into Mylio is confusing and can have unexpected outcomes
Some import options that people expect, like “Move” or “Consolidate” are not present. Some advanced import options like adding a Source Folder are relegated to completely different parts of the application, making the process of getting media into Mylio confusion.
Additionally, understanding what is going to happen to your media is not explained. In some instances, the media is removed from the device and in others it remains on the device.
Pain Point 3: Users are unsure how they can add additional devices to Mylio.
The ability to add a device has a hidden entry point. The options within the Add Device section are very limited and don’t offer help on adding Mylio to a phone, tablet, or computer.
User research showed a correlation between the amount of devices people had registered to Mylio and their long-term commitment. It was important that we make adding a second, third, or even fourth device an easy early step.
Pain Point 4: Managing devices when issues arise is confusing.
When something goes wrong or there is a change that needs made, Mylio’s notifications are hidden and completely missed. This results in Mylio not being able to communicate with users to help them with configuration changes.
Ideating the Solution
With the problems well defined it was time to start doing some rough sketches. Due to time constraints, the UI engineer recommended we reuse a portion of the app that would become obsolete in solving these problems. In the prior months we had worked together in this same area in adapting it for a dual screen mobile experience and we believed we could offer a solution to all of these problems with strong information architecture, gamification, and progressive disclosure.
I started by sketching some rough potential solutions and then did some preliminary validation on the sketches with members of our team.
Solutions and Validation
With an overall plan in place, I took to Figma to begin high fidelity mocking and prototyping solutions to each of the problems outlined above. Below is a recap of these issues and a side by side comparison with results to each of these changes.
Pain Point 1: Users are unsure of the first steps they should take when starting Mylio
BEFORE
AFTER
Mylio dropped new users into an empty folder view with little indication of how to use the application, what initial steps to take, or how to build a functioning library.
New users are taken directly to a game-ified version of getting started, helping them walkthrough everything needed to have an ideal setup and become successful users.
OUTCOME
This specific change ranked first in post-launch testing when learning about why incoming Mylio users were much more successful in getting started with Mylio as well as to why people were initially returning to Mylio when, previously, abandonment was high.
Pain Point 2: Importing media initially into Mylio is confusing and can have unexpected outcomes
BEFORE
Mylio's initial import options were vague with little guidance and set no expectations on what would happen after the import was complete.
AFTER
A revamped, intent based import process asked simple questions like "where are the files you would like to import" and gave additional steps that helped the user understand what would happen to their files after importing.
OUTCOME
An increase of users with media imported into their account during their first session with Mylio rose sharply, also driving higher retention and monthly active users.
Pain Point 3: Users are unsure how they can add additional devices to Mylio.
BEFORE
Adding a device was cryptic and hidden, a small plus sign in the top right corner of a complicated part of the app. After selecting the plus sign, a limited amount of options for adding devices were available.
AFTER
An Actions section of the Dashboard brought together all of Mylio's most important actions like Adding a device and importing. After exploring Mylio for some time, we also alerted you to add another device with a recommended action notification.
Adding a device also included helper text and offered all expected options like adding a phone, tablet, or computer.
I made adding a phone easy by allowing a QR code take you immediately to the appropriate place to download Mylio for your device.
I streamlined adding Mylio to a different computer by making it easy to email download and setup instructions to other machines.
OUTCOME
Data showed a strong correlation between multiple devices and being an active user in Mylio. Making adding a device both discoverable and flexible drove overall higher retention once released.
Pain Point 4: Managing devices when issues arise is confusing.
BEFORE
Mylio's notification system was based on a small red dot in the right corner of the app, which made alerting the user when things went wrong nearly impossible. Once clicked, the red dot went away immediately, which means that the user would often forget to act on the notification if they wanted to work on it later.
AFTER
Blue notification bubbles were introduced to get the users attention when needed.
A notifications section of the Dashboard gave direct access to all old notifications so they could be acted on at a later time.
An alert was added to the device icon to show that a remote device may be having issues. When selected, the issue and solution were available immediately.
On the device with the problem a recommended action was shown in red at the bottom of the panel.
OUTCOME
A decrease in support calls after the Dashboard released correlated directly to the notifications and actions I implemented. As I continued to iterate and add additional notifications to help with errors, support calls related to those specific issues continued to decrease.
Prototype
The prototype used for user testing and as a guide for engineers can be accessed below or at this link.
Takeaways
Mylio is a deep product with many great features but users were failing because no care was given to the presentation of the features or the user journey through the application. I was able to change that with Mylio's new Dashboard by bringing features together, simplifying device management, and making a streamlined process into the application.
Overall this is not only an information architecture change and success, but a success for every feature offered.
Changing photo management solutions is an overwhelming task, but by focusing on the experience of new users and providing a helpful path through onboarding we were able to calm some trepidation of new users and saw big payoffs for this work.
