iOS Mobile Application

Building an app for recording and sharing creative voice messages with friends

Summary
Designing Wavechat’s mobile experience from scratch and achieving 4.9 stars in the App Store, winning Product Hunt’s Snapchat edition of Maker Contest.
Get the app
My role
Lead Product Designer
Outcome
I designed a simple iOS app allowing users to record, edit and share their short messages in a few taps which won Product Hunt's Makers Festival: Snapchat Edition and was featured on the App Store.
‍
In this project, I worked closely with the product owners, discussed product strategy, designed the UI & UX, communicated with product managers and developers. During the design process, I created components, guidelines, and general templates to easily scale as the client's user base grows with time.
Product
Wavechat is Snapchat for voice: the best way to stay connected, through authentic short audio messages.
Challenge
While the team had signals to suggest their users wanted to connect through short audio messages, Wavechat’s web-only experience was a powerful hurdle preventing users from doing so. Using a browser to “create” posts created a lot of friction: requesting microphone access, not having any interesting audio to share on the device, etc.
Approach
1:1 user-interaction interviews with 20 users, in-app surveys, and UX investigation of Snapchat, Anchor, Voicemod, and Another Voice Changer surfaced that the most important aspect of sharing audio notes was:
  • the ease of creation (under 5 seconds);
  • audio quality.
Competitor research
Persona
ICE score
Information architecture
Prototype testing
I used the ICE score to prioritize functionalities based on their relative value, using three parameters: Impact, Confidence, and Ease.
Hypotheses
Competitor research
Persona
ICE score
Information architecture
Prototype testing
  • After 4 taps, users give up and close the app;
    • Test: with 9 taps, 10% of users completed a note;
    • With 6 taps, 50%;
    • With 4 taps, 90%;
  • Users feel self-conscious about their voice when using playback
    • Test 1: remove playback. Result: 80% of users did not send because they couldn't check;
    • Test 2: add filters that “beautify” their voice. Result: 50% increase in notes created.
Conceptualization
Based on the user research, I focused on limiting the user flow to create notes to less than 4 taps: Record. Share. Select Contact. Send. That meant the Record button had to be prominent on the home screen. Illustrations were key, to show the user how to record without using text.
Results
After several months of work, we had it: an MVP where users could share a note in just 4 taps; where 19 or the 20 users I tested on figured shared a note in 20 seconds without any guidance, and where an optional Audio Filter ensured good audio quality.

Voice Recordings

Users can record their audio notes with one tap on the Record button from the home screen.

For a more complete note, users can add visuals: a selfie, background color, emojis, and even draw something to make the voice message more fun.

Social Community

A user can share his voice messages on any social platform, including Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Instagram, or send privately via text message. Give your messages a voice!

Social Community

Users can share their voice messages on any social platform, including Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Instagram, or send privately via text message. As well as, they can save voice message to  Camera Roll, and show friends and family in person.

Feed Personalisation

Users can fuel their creativity with samples of new songs, podcasts, and more. They can also discover what other creators and influencers make so they never miss a beat.

Learnings
The best designs come from collaboration. Design thinking is the key to stay on track throughout the entire design process. Focus on the features that could deliver the highest value for your users and are directly connected to the startup overall goal.

“I worked with Marina in 2019 for several months on the design for my company's app, Wavechat (the Snapchat for Voice). She provided a huge amount of design assets that helped spur the creative direction of our aesthetic, cutting development time down dramatically. Marina was a pleasure to work with, and would happily work with her again. ”

Dave Goldblatt
CEO Wavechat

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Sergie Kalashnikov
CEO at BentoBox

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Bryant Chou
CTO at Slapper Labs
Marina Karpenko
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