Ideation: how we got to ideation

To start brainstorming ideas, we focused our attention on the lows of the creative journey because we hypothesized that these represent places where people fall off the creative train. We used various methods, such as storyboarding and paper prototyping, to gather feedback from our target users.

First round of iteration

In our first round of iteration, we attempted to address the lows that were identified in the journey maps

Initial Concepts

Seven Storyboards

We created seven storyboards to address the lows of the creative process. These concepts focused on designing creative acts that were accessible, fun, and inspirational.

User Testing Insights

Need for Motivation

When we showed people the seven storyboards, they recognized that although many of the ideas were interesting to play with initially, they may not continue using the products after the novelty effect faded.

Defining a framework

Creating a Habit-Forming Model

We used our research into habit formation to come up with a framework for building habit-forming products. This framework had four tenets - trigger, creative act, reward, and investment.

Second round of iteration

Based on the feedback we received, we reinterated our concepts

Concepts based on Framework

Story Boarding and speed dating concepts

We created three new concepts based on the first iteration of our framework. Each concepts had a trigger, a creative act, a reward, and opportunities for investment over time.

User Testing Insights

Story Boarding and speed dating concepts

When we presented the three concepts to our target users and clients, we realized that since our target users can be intimidated by the idea of creating something, a simple creative product may not even get them onboard. We needed to add a “hook” to get our target users to start using our product. So we turned to more research on basic human needs.

Modifying the Framework

Introducing Motivation into the Framework

We wanted to move beyond our own preconceived biases and come up with a more inclusive and empirical definition of creativity. We asked people to give us six words that they associate with creativity. We got over 70 responses and we compiled our data into a word cloud.

Final round of iteration

Identifying the Motivation

Desire to connect is the strongest motivation

From our literature review we identified three types of motivations that are related to basic human needs and are more likely to motivate a millennial to undertake a new creative activity. We found that the desire to connect is the strongest motivation on a daily basis, which is a requirement for habit formation.

Defining Creative Act

Testing different creative acts

The previous studies as well as a few additional speed dating sessions established that staying connected with others is a strong motivation for millennials to undertake any creative act. So next, we set out to find the ideal creative act that could fulfill their desire to feel connected with other people.

User Testing Insights

"I see myself using PicPong"

When we tested the three creative acts, people were especially enthusiastic about the half-and-half image idea and had lots of fun experimenting with it. The user testing also revealed that the image quality really mattered for people and they wanted to see more inspirations to help them complete the image in a fun way.

Experience prototyping indicated that people had fun and were thoroughly engaged in completing half of an image.

Refining PicPong

The name is inspired by the game ping pong, in which players hit a ball back and forth in quick succession.

Version 1

Drawbacks in the first iteration of PicPong

We tested the hi-fidelity prototype of PicPong with 5 participants and as well as clients and following is the feedback we recieved:

Participant's natural intention became to consume content rather than creating content
The upfront public contents made people wonder if everything will be public here.
Lastly, many people said the app reminded them of Instagram

Version 2

Final iteration of PicPong

To address people’s concern, we made some major changes for our final version of PicPong. Following are the changes we made:

We focused on the creative act itself by nudging people to start making as soon as they open the app.
We have also helped people build more personal connections by devoting a whole section to one-to-one messages, and people can reach this section easily from the home screen by one click
Lastly, we built our own visual identity by changing the layout and using a totally different color palette.