At a time when we're more divided than ever and social technology is designed to tear us apart — we aimed to design a social app for bringing close friends and family closer together. With Picmate you can mail your mom photo prints and messages, weekend adventures with your besties, happy valentines to BAE, and happy birthdays to everyone — whatever life event, whatever photo you took, whatever message you have to say: share it in real life with Picmate.
Looking closer at the details, you find the old-fashion stamped envelopes feel like modern snail mail. As people integrate the app into their lives they find it replacing greeting cards and postcard apps for celebrating special events, vacations, holidays, birthdays, and more.
Picmate is even referred to as a "printing app" because of the low-cost prints and ability to send prints to yourself — making it a replacement for apps like ShutterFly, Snapfish, CVS Print, and others.
Trend Insights
A Shift in Behavior
The first prototype was inspired by the UX journey of Snapchat — imitated for the speed, simplicity, and ease of use. Ultimately, we learned the downfall of this flow resulted in higher costs and less efficiency from mailing envelopes with only one photo print inside (not taking advantage of the weight covered by a USPS Forever Stamp).
The initial testers were close friends and family. Although biased, they provided valuable feedback to get started.
I really had to force people to use the first prototype — and admittedly my mom was the top supporter. Although some people dropped off during sign-up — a lot didn't even hit install on the app store page (it looked pretty sketchy).
This is a major accomplishment and much faster than any other app on the market.
Users reported high interest in choosing the color of their photo frames. Unfortunately, printing colored frames was slower operationally (required more precise cutting).
Prototype #1 User Feedback (accumulated)
Although the app UX exceeded expectations for the fastest way to mail a photo print — it resulted in a poor experience at the mailbox. When a recipient opened the envelope they would only find one single print. Users reported this felt lackluster and boring.
Economically, this UX was also not optimal. The USPS Forever Stamp is the highest cost incurred and covers 1 ounce — yet the average weight of an envelope with one print is only 0.12 ounces. This wasn't an efficient use of the stamp and also not environmentally-friendly. This resulted in high cost to users.
Almost all users reported that they didn't want to subscribe monthly to send photo prints — they simply wanted to purchase what they wanted and when they wanted it. Although I was hoping to "force" people into making print-mailing a consistent behavior (admittedly for the recurring revenue), it made way more sense to scrap the PikPoints system and allow people to checkout with individual Stripe transactions.
Although the camera improved speed of sharing prints — it neglected the reality that when spending (even small amounts of) money people want to curate the photos they're printing. Also, people wanted to use their phone camera as opposed to the in-app camera — likely because they want to stay "in the moment."
Prototype #1 Conclusion
The second prototype aimed to increase the amount of prints included per envelope — to maximize use of the Forever Stamp 1 ounce coverage, to help lower user costs, and to improve the experience of the recipient at the mailbox (just one print per envelope was boring). To accomplish this, the user journey imitated a texting/messaging app by opening to a list of contacts. By tapping a contact, you could view the conversation of photos/notes mailed back and forth between the two members of the conversation. The note cards were introduced to feel more like snail mail and allow senders to write thoughtful notes, birthday wishes, thankful notes, and generally keep in touch with more context than just photo prints by themselves.
*note: The "Conversation Thread" screen was meant to show cards sent and received, but due to complications from querying data from the database they needed to be separated across two tabs. This was the easiest route for testing, but had this concept been validated they would've evolved into one conversation thread.
During prototype 2, the initial friends-and-family-testers began to spread to friends of friends and strangers that offered a flow of unbiased feedback and insights. I consistently emailed new sign-ups to ask questions and offer customer support as needed.
The ease of payment made it more accessible for people to send packs. The pivot towards "Snail Club" branding also seemed to generate interest in a modern take on an old-fashion communication method.
Prototype #2 showed a significant increase in revenue through smoother user flows, improved checkout experience, and more trustworthy UI design.
In an attempt to improve user engagement, we tested a feature to meet local snail mates (local snail singles near you?). User feedback indicated privacy concerns (receiving unsolicited mail from strangers). Also, it seemed apparent that users didn't want to meet complete strangers in a sentimental/slow way.
Although a few people did send stickers and most users reported positive interest (especially the custom photo stickers), my intuition led me to believe the stickers were causing slow-downs in the user flows, leading to increased abandonment and slower sending speeds. The profit margin was around 85¢, but the stickers were slow to print operationally and also had quality assurance issues.
Prototype #2 User Feedback (accumulated)
Many users reported loving the cute envelopes, vintage stamps, and the concept of keeping in touch over mail. There was so much attraction that I renamed the project "Snail Club." However, users consistently reported that the main barrier for them to send envelopes was actually writing the note cards. Drafted packs that never got sent mostly contained unfinished note cards. Although people say they love the idea of snail mail — their actions indicate that they care more about photo prints.
87% of cards sent were photo cards. The photo cards were easy to upload and send — and they also felt like a higher value than the note card. Although I was hoping for Snail Club to be "the modern snail mail messaging app" I learned that typed note cards just aren't as sentimental or old-fashion as handwritten letters.
This feedback hit the hardest. The original goal of the project was to build an easier, faster way to share prints. I got so lost in features that people started reporting that it took too long to submit prints. The user flow for adding cards resulted in a lot of screen transitions that made it cumbersome to add more.
The recipients are receiving unsolicited envelopes from their friends. An envelope with a brand name on the front that you don't recognize usually goes straight to the trash. An alarming amount of users reported their recipient never receiving the mail.
Prototype #2 Conclusion
The third prototype was re-branded to remove the "slow" snail and feel fast, reliable, and trustworthy. The onboarding experience was simplified to decrease drop-off rates (mostly from inputting birthdate). The initial screen presented a feed of all the photos you've sent with a big blue (+) button that immediately opens your photo library to start uploading photos for a pack. This focus on sending photo prints improved print per envelope ratios and allowed for a much faster user experience.
What originally started as friends and family quickly grew organically to friends of friends, and then strangers we couldn't track.
The improved user flows with an emphasis on quickly sending photo prints was a huge success — and even inspired more people to add a note card.
We never spent a penny on advertising — all growth was organic word of mouth referrals.
1. Recent Friends: Tap on your friends on the top bar to begin uploading photos with your friend pre-selected as the recipient. This offers a personalized experience while composing.
2. Primary FAB: Tap the Floating Action Button (+) to upload a photo and then choose a recipient — this journey is for users who want to select their photos before choosing recipient, or users sending to multiple recipients.
• Primary action FAB for adding more photos
• Focus on adding photos over note cards
• Add photos, write notes, and add captions without leaving the "Pack Designer" — removing transitions and the lowered sense of place
• Simplify to one note card
After dozens of iterations — a simple strip of paper is curved with two notches on each end to convert photo prints into decorative displays — perfect for any desk, coffee table, or night stand.
When envelopes were being mailed to non-user addresses — we tested various sign-up card designs to increase the rate of recipients joining.
We experimented with collecting birthdays, addresses in a multi-step form, and other data points. We found this simple onboarding process increased conversions the most by eliminating as many barriers as possible. Upon sign-up, the initial state educates a new user with instructions for sending their first pack.
Throughout this project, hundreds of sketches were drawn to help illustrate new ideas for the user experience. Many sketches made it to the trash, and many made it into stacks of paper. Here's just a small sample of a few sketches I found in a recent stack.
