An AI note-taking tool designed for modern people
memonster is a collaborative design project created for the "Unicorn Designer Development Program", which is a Taiwan design competition. memonster helps people learn valuable knowledge and create their own perspectives.
100+
Pages
21
Duration (day)
2022
Year
Background
Modern people feel frustrated and anxious about the vast amount of information.
As designers, we constantly strive to learn new things, but sometimes we feel frustrated and anxious about the vast amount of information we need to absorb. We often find ourselves feeling stuck.
This realization prompted us to think of ways to alleviate this problem. We came up with the idea of building a note-taking tool that could help people organize their thoughts and reduce anxiety associated with design-related informationt
App Design
Unblock
UX research, UX process planning, UI design, Brand design
Goal
Build a minimum viable product (MVP) that includes strong product management, product design, and brand design.
Create an AI-powered note-taking app to assist individuals in gaining valuable knowledge and developing unique perspectives.
Challenge
A tight schedule: We need to create a comprehensive MVP product that includes product management, product design, and brand design during the design competition. To ensure that we stay on track, we have created a priority list of must-do tasks, which will help us focus on the most important ones.
Collaborate with new teammates: Working with new teammates can be challenging. To make sure that there are no communication issues, we provided “How to work with me” manuals to each team member at the beginning of our collaboration. This helped us communicate more efficiently and effectively.
Competitive market: The note-taking tool market is very competitive, with many players already operating in it. Therefore, to identify the core pain points, we conducted extensive research, including user interviews and usability testing.
Impact & Results
We have achieved the "Silver Award" successfully.
We achieved impressive teamwork as each individual gave their best effort in completing their tasks and assisting others.
We conducted two successful rounds of testing & iterations and found valuable insights within a tight timeline.
Design Process
01 Discover
During this phase, we conducted a comprehensive analysis from various perspectives to ensure that we are addressing the correct issues and creating solutions that fulfill the needs of users and market demands.
Market analysis
we conducted a quantitative study on the market for AI-powered note-taking tools and the daily Internet usage habits of people in Taiwan. The study revealed these two things:
The AI tool market is expected to grow 4.7 times in the next five years.
Taiwanese people spend 69% of their daily time searching for information.
*Note: It’s important to note that this was a design project conducted in October 2022, and at that time, the chat-GPT had just been launched and AI-powered design tools were not yet widely available. lol
Utility of information=Meaning/Time —— Doug Clinton
In today's world, we are bombarded with a vast amount of information. It can be overwhelming to determine which information is essential and which is not. As a result, this can lead to anxiety and make it difficult for us to make the right decisions.
To address this problem, Doug Clinton has proposed a formula to calculate the utility of information. The formula is straightforward: Utility of information = Meaning / Time.
What this means is that the value of the information we consume (m) is divided by the time it takes to consume it (t) to arrive at the utility (U) of the information.
This formula highlights the importance of obtaining meaningful information and consuming it in less time. Therefore, to increase the utility of information, it is vital to focus on increasing the "meaning" of the information while decreasing the "time" it takes to consume it.
Competitor analysis
After analyzing the features of various competitors, we were able to gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. This helped us clarify our market positioning and identify opportunities.
Here are some of our findings:
Capture notes
Most competitors focus on capturing and taking notes.
Various types of views
Most note-taking tools develop various types of views to switch the perspective of notes.
Without AI assistant
Few note-taking apps provide a function with an AI assistant to deliver thoughts and ideas.
User interview
As part of our research efforts, we conducted a user interview to gain insights about users.
Our findings reveal that many users tend to store a large volume of information, which can become overwhelming when they attempt to review and extract valuable insights from their past thoughts.
🔎 Users often feel frustrated due to the disorganized state of their information.
🔎 Users struggle to find the information they need because they have too many bookmarks.
🔎 Users usually don't record and organize their information, which adds to the problem.
🔎 Users seldom share their perspectives with others because they lack the motivation to do so.
To gain insights into the user’s journey, we created customer journey maps to visualize each stage of the process.
02 Define
During the process, we successfully defined the product positioning of memonster as a tool that helps users learn valuable knowledge and create their own perspectives. We also identified the problems, developed hypotheses, and set project goals.
Identify the problems
The information is difficult to locate.
Users often struggle to find the information they need because they don't organize it properly.
Create new perspective can be challenge.
Users lack motivation to share their thoughts with others, as it can be difficult for them to think of a unique perspective.
The complexity of creation process.
Even if users write down ideas in their note-taking app, they are less likely to share them on social media because of the numerous steps involved.
Let’s build the hypotheses!
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Define the project goals
Create an AI-powered note-taking app to assist individuals in gaining valuable knowledge and developing unique perspectives.
Next, we established the project goals based on the problems and hypotheses together.
Our goals are…
03 Design
My design principles are to simplify complicated processes, use concise UX writing, and maintain consistency to enhance the brand image for users.
Create functional map & IA
Ideate the UX process of creation.
04 Deliver
In this phase, we conducted two rounds of user testing and design iteration. As a result, we identified two key functions: "Writing with original notes" & "Writing with AI".
Brand Design
Our vision is to help people learn valuable knowledge and create their own perspectives.
The three brand keywords for memonster are focus, relaxation, and peace.
Design principle
My design principles are Aesthetic, Simplicity, and Feasibility.
Finding notes through AI-generated topics.
The “AI-Generated Topics” function is a solution to the problem of losing notes in note-taking apps.
It automatically generates topics to help users locate their notes easily. Additionally, the visualization design further aids users in quickly finding their notes.
During usability testing, we found that most users appreciate this feature as it eliminates the need for manual note organization.
What makes this feature unique is that users can switch between AI-generated topics and their personal preferences.
Searching notes soon through good readable layout.
To make the user interface more readable, we updated the note views by changing two columns to one column.
Reminders for information overload
It's important to avoid saving too much information and assuming that you’re actually learning.
Most users tend to unconsciously retain an overload of information in a day. Therefore, we're considering the possibility of setting a reminder to help reduce their anxiety.
We designed a process that allows users to set a limit on the amount of information they want to retain. If they save more information than the limit they've set, memonster will send them a reminder.
Here are two features of the function:
Extensions provide a seamless experience.
Users could be more conscious of the information.
Notification for organizing notes
We want to help users reduce anxiety by recognizing what is important to them.To solve this problem, we have designed a process to remind users to organize their notes.
AI-powered Assistant: AI-assistant better than Automatically
Our project goal is to develop a process that utilizes AI to facilitate the creation of thoughts. We believe this will make it easier and more seamless for users to develop their own perspectives.
Most users hope that AI primarily assists in writing rather than directly generating the content.
Through usability testing, we discovered that users want to be involved in the creation process. As a result, we shifted the role of AI from being automated to being an assistant that helps users create their thoughts more efficiently.
Concise writing for communication
Effective communication is the foundation of good design. memonster aims to develop a unique creation process, which necessitates guiding users through the task with clear and concise UX writing.
After conducting usability testing, we discovered that the original writing was not clear to users, and they were unable to complete the creation process. As a result, we have rewritten and rearranged the layout to provide a seamless experience for users.
🥲 The solutions we designed failed...
Social media templates
We assumed that simplifying the social media sharing process would increase users' motivation to create and share their thoughts. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two usability tests.
Unfortunately, the results of the usability tests showed that users found the solution unclear and complex, which did not increase their motivation. As a result, we have decided to shift our focus to other features that users are more satisfied with.
