A playful app that helps you discover your city with a fresh perspective.
Getting Started: Brand Extension
We developed a concept and brand extension that fits within the constraints and aesthetic of the parent brand, Augment.
Our brand standards include:
a suitable name
the brand’s values/vision statement
logo
color palette
typography conventions
tone of voice for content
imagery guidelines
We began by researching the Augment brand and suite of tools. From there we took branding cues and began to build a separate brand system that compliments Augment, but is strong enough to stand on its own and is fitting of the services our concept app offers.
STEP 1: Creating a proto-persona
“As an initial step in creating personas, a proto-persona is an assumptive persona that enables us as creators to talk about those who we believe would be attracted to our concept. We can hypothesize about their behaviors and patterns; later we may validate our assumptions.”
This week we dove into crafting our proto-persona. The proto-persona is a precise description of our user and what he/she wishes to accomplish — our persona is defined by our user’s goals, and it is the means by which we empathize with and communicate about our users.
As we work towards a thorough understanding of the user’s goals, we really begin to understand the design problem at hand. With a“design for the individual, not all things to all people” approach, we began to develop a single archetype for a class of users that is fictional but rigorously informed.
There is no standard for a“good” persona, but we created one which
has specific personal details, that help to solidify the mental image,
is precise,
has user goals that are clearly expressed,
provides a“day in the life” narrative,
includes a single statement/quote that cuts through all the clutter,
and explores the goals, tasks, and challenges that inform key opportunities.
STEP 2: Tasks, thoughts, tactics
“With the proto-persona we created a hypothetical archetype, most importantly, we began to hypothesize the goals that are specific to these primary users. We can create a useful and positive experience by aligning with these goals. We will further examine our users’ goals by breaking each down into relevant components while simultaneously developing empathy and further our understanding of the hypothetical user. This will help to put is in a people-first, not feature-first, mindset.”
Moving forward with the initial goals developed in our proto-persona, we’ve started to develop an expansive list of user tasks, thoughts, and tactics. Based on informed assumptions, we can start to glean some hypothetical patterns, and develop some specific opportunities for Pocket.
There were many iterations of this exercise. The one that we found to be most valuable and successful, involved returning to a list of qualities that our user, Chloe, embodies. From there we began to ask the questions of:
what does the user need or want to do?(tasks)
what thoughts or feelings does our user have about this task?(thoughts)
and what action or steps do they take to achieve this task?(tactics)
It was important to keep the tactic human, and leave the tech out of it, for now. This allows an open exploration that might lead to the discovery of unanticipated opportunities.
Getting Started: Brand Extension
STEP 1: Creating a proto-persona