Sunday Morning View

A Women Focused App for Authentic and Real Content

Brief

Sunday Morning View (SMV) celebrates the natural beauty of women. They have an Instagram following of 283k users and an online magazine both focused on self love, body acceptance, and touch upon topics that may be against the norm to discuss (eg cellulite, stretch marks, sex, etc). SMV would like to continue their celebration of women and empower them to be confident in their skin, but Instagram flags SMV’s photos for "going against" community guidelines. They’ve noticed, "the flagged photos are of women who are considered bigger".

Role

Solo UXUI Contractor

(did not work with a developer)

Client

Sunday Morning View

Brief

Challenge

How Can SMV Create a Safe Space for Women?

SMV wonders if they will get banned from Instagram and where women would go to see “women like them” (with “body imperfections” or for looking different from society’s expectations of “beautiful”). Although there has been more openness towards women’s bodies and self acceptance (eg #FreeTheNipple, #LoveYourLines, #FatIsNotAViolation), women still have a low self confidence and are affected by societal standards in conjunction with body shaming. Traditionally marginalized groups range from size of bodies, disabilities, and skin color. SMV aims to combat them and what society deems as imperfections.

Challenge

Solution

An unfiltered and unashamed community of women

Users can post unfiltered pictures and videos taken through Sunday Morning View's camera feature.
They are able to discuss topics centered around what women may experience by: writing articles, sharing links, creating polls, and asking questions in forums.
No popularity contest with "likes" or "follows".

Prototype

Solution

Research

Media helps shape and reinforces cultural beliefs and values. When it displays certain types of bodies, it pressures women to achieve those “ideal” appearances. According to Ipsos, 83% of women in the US are dissatisfied with their bodies. More importantly, when certain body types are not considered okay, individuals experience prejudice and discrimination:

mother of twins felt fat, ugly, and disgusting for sharing her post-partum body
curvier Tiktok influencers banned for showing "too much skin"
#FatIsNotaViolation was created when Instagram flagged or closed curvier women's accounts
curvier women show the same content as smaller framed women but get censored or warned for "violating" policies

With media reinforcing size oppression, women may continue to have negative perceptions of themselves and place their value on their appearance.

Need for More Diversity

Numbers have an Important Story to Tell

Throughout the qualitative questionnaire of 33 participants, topics of eating disorders, body dysmorphia, internalized fatphobia, body comparison, and low confidence were brought up. They were caused by the societal pressures enforced by media's beauty standards that tall and skinny are attractive.

100% of participants want to see unfiltered images of women

When asked about how people can normalize women's bodies and their "imperfections":

66.7% said there needs to be more exposure and representation of diverse women and body types
15.2% mentioned educating and having discussions

Research

Users' Needs

"You're Not Enough"

One qualitative questionnaire question asked "what kind of things do you see or hear about certain body types?" The results led to this storyboard.

37% of participants are still overcoming body image issues.
33% have overcome insecurities through shifting their mindset, therapy, and/or realizing social media photos are edited.

First time trying to get a buy in

After presenting the qualitative questionnaire results to the client, he responded with "I'm not keen on surveys only because people don't know what they want until they see it. Henry Ford once said 'If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses'."

I followed up with six of the participants for an interview to expand upon the questions asked on the qualitative questionnaire and to understand what they want for a women focused self-acceptance app.

After sending this list of what interviewees mentioned throughout the interview, the client was more convinced on the UX process:

connecting with others***
having discussions/chat in safe space***
sharing experiences***
support group/system
natural pictures***
motivational messages/positive affirmations
resource sharing
accountability

*** denotes the most spoken of

Users' Needs

Planning

Let the research guide you

A card sort activity was created to an idea of how people would want the categories to be grouped together. It was completed by 10 volunteers and the results are shown in this similarity matrix. With this, a site map was made to understand the app's structure so it would be easier for users to navigate through it.

Too close to home

My research wasn't enough to pinpoint the feature roadmap. Everything seemed important for various reasons and it may have been because the topic of self-love and body acceptance felt too close to home as a former bulimic. A competitor analysis was done to understand what other companies were doing well and what SMV could innovate on. It supplemented the interviews and card sort as I had to remind myself that I'm not the user. Keeping the research and users in mind, a user flow displayed below shows how users navigate through the app.

A bigger version of the user flow can be seen here.

Sketches to plan out the wireframes. Please note some were covered as request of the stakeholder.

I learned I don't like to "Sketch" so the full version is found here on Figma

Planning

Testing

First feedback from 8 testers

There were three tasks for the usability test:

Filter out something they didn't want to see.
See comments and browse through the media and discussion features, viewing the tabs.
Take a selfie to share with the community.

1/8 testers said "Don't show" was confusing. User thought it meant "don't show my post to the public".
4/8 testers said "Hide" is better since it's shorter

4/8 testers said "Undo" preferred if it was separated from other actions. "Undo" was an action versus the other options, they considered as feedback.

Navigating from the media and discuss icons were easy. Users were able to understand what kind of content was there.
2/8 testers (also designers) mentioned the search bar takes up a lot of space and that the tabs should have a fixed width so it doesn't seem scrollable.

6/8 mentioned the color of the action texts should be different to distinguish comments versus seeing more results.

The two design testers mentioned the tags took up a lot of space.
One advised to have it horizontally scrollable.

6/8 participants loved this idea of an unfiltered camera feature.

It took between 5-7 minutes for testers to complete the three tasks including confusion and feedback.

Second feedback from 5 testers

Even with the implementations from the first round of feedback, there were more iterations to be made.

Change implemented: 5/5 testers were easily able to figure out how to have content not shown ("hide").
Reiteration needed: 1/5 testers clicked on the heart bubble next to the 208 because she thought it would be clickable.
- I realized that a was a huge error on my part to focus solely on "see more comments" text to view comments.

Reiteration needed: Although users didn't mention it, I wanted to incorporate a way for users to comment without having to see more comments.
- It's one less step for the users and it's something familiar to them such as other social media.

Reiteration needed:

4/5 testers asked how the app would know what topic is irrelevant or what to filter out.
- "If I said to filter out the burger bulimia video, would it filter out food or bulimia?"
3/5 weren't sure what screen would appear after selecting the reason to hide the post.
3/5 asked what "exit" meant:
- "Is it to exit this pop-up?"
- "Am I exiting the app?"
- "Will it always take me back home or the screen I'm on?"

Change implemented: Adding color helped users differentiate comments from seeing more results.

Reiteration needed: 3/5 wanted play buttons because they find video automatically playing to be distracting
- One tester went further to say it's annoying and she hates it when Instagram videos start playing

This screen is still the highest praised. Testers love the no filter feature.

Change implemented: 3/5 preferred being able to create their own hashtags.
Reiteration needed: 1/5 said the text users type is hard to differentiate between the prompts.

This time it took about 4-5 minutes for users to complete the tasks which included feedback. The tasks were easier to understand and a few more tweaks had to be made.

Testing

Final Product

The why(s) explain the reasoning behind my design decisions and I continued to explain the changes made from the previous wireframes. All the screens are not shown below but can be seen in the prototype.

Prototype

Why: A home screen newsfeed with

content from the SMV community.

Change implemented: Added user comment section and play button to videos.

Why: To ensure every member feels safe and supported by being able to hide content and give feedback to SMV staff.
Change implemented: The added screen allows users to explain why they wanted to filter a post.

Why: Various ways users can post based on needs found in the questionnaire and interviews.

Prototype

Why: 67% of 33 questionnaire participants wanted more exposure and representation of different body types and natural bodies when asked about normalizing "imperfections".

Whys:

14% of questionnaire participants said there should be more discussions on normalizing "flaws"
18% of questionnaire participants expressed the importance of learning from one another and supporting through resources
50% of 6 interviewees wanted to speak freely without judgement

Whys:

61% of 33 questionnaire participants stated media negatively affects their body image due to unrealistic standards of beauty and not comparing themselves to others.
67% of interviewees shared social media made them feel self-conscious but then realized most images are edited.
100% of questionnaire participants wanted to see unfiltered images.

Final Product

Lessons Learned & Next Steps

Next steps: "Connect" was a "nice to have" from participants which was why it was taken out in the final product section for the purpose of the portfolio. Since it is a need of the stakeholder and aligns with research participants' wants, it is something to continue working on. Additionally, the "profile" screen may have features interviewees mentioned but I think another interview and/or qualitative questionnaire are necessary to have more data to ensure its success.

Lesson: Balancing the wants and needs of the users and the stakeholder can be challenging but in the end, both sides had the same goal for the users: having a safe space to share thoughts and content, uplift each other, and gain confidence and self-love.

What I'm most proud of: Being able to get my first buy-in which was one of the impacts on what the MVP would be like.

Lessons

Motivation & Special Thanks

Thank you K.G. for giving me the opportunity to design the app. I hope to see it come to life some day.
Thanks to all the women who shared their stories for this project. Your experiences kept me motivated.
After witnessing so many women lacking confidence because of their appearance and being a former bulimic myself, I hope you all know that your worth is not based off your looks.