Message-In-Styles

Enhancing User Experience of Messaging apps

Objective

Today, Monotype has a B2B commerce model. Challenge was to identify a potential business opportunity in consumer solution market. The target audience was millennials.

About

We proposed a solution that allow millennial to share content casually (Casual impulse) while maintaining high levels of creativity (Professional creativity). In instant messaging apps, the chat bubble has no function other than wrapping the text inside. The solution helped to make them useful and usable.

My role in this project included the conceptualisation of the idea, the User and Market research, Demo app Ui designing and creating message style illustrations.

Achievements

1. Filed four utility patent applications as an Inventor in “Selectable Styles for Text Messaging System publishers, for Brand owners, Font service providers and User devices ”

2. Moreover, as a result of the project, Monotype acquired Swyft Media firm for $27 million.

Owlie

Decision Making Simplified.

About

Owlie is an AI based Facebook Messenger app that simplifies user’s day-to-day decision-making problems. User just has to feed in the question he wants to ask to his friends, Owlie will generate interactive polls that can be sent to friends via Facebook Messenger.

My Role

Concept developementConceiving the idea, User interviews and Surveys, Market Research, Business Model development.

Product designProduct Roadmap, User flow, Wireframe and prototype of the app, UI design, User testing of the app, Brand design, Messenger bot flow, Website design and development

Achievements

1. Filed a patent application as an Inventor in “Context Analysis of Message Enhancement”

2. Looking at the quality of product and problem that we are trying to solve, Facebook funded the project through the Bootstrap FbStart Program.

Problem Statement

Some people are good at making decisions in their lives while others are not. Some take help of internet while some need help from their friends, family, acquaintances etc. Depending on the type of the decision, some dig into the matter and carefully analysis before taking the decision while others don’t.

Presently, millennials have many ways that help them to solve their day to day decision making problems — like friends, family, internet, few mobile apps. But unfortunately, either these applications have poor user experience, ‘another app to download’ problem or solved problems specific to only one category like politics, fashion industry etc. Similarly, brands have no straightforward approach to reach to their consumers for their product reviews to reach to better decision making for their products or services.

Messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, LINE, KakaoTalk etc. are used for having such conversations. But the response rate to the advice from peers on these messaging apps decreases due to these factors:

No Response Aggregation

Inefficient Process — cluttered UI, typing hassle, deviation from topic, long time to conclude etc.

App Design

The design was supposed to come out to be high-end design something like Uber, which is acceptable by all demography. Along with that, it needs to be highly interactive and fluid with easiest and simplest way to create and answer polls. Other inspirations are: Paper (Facebook), Twitter Moments, Snapchat and Medium.

Owlie bot

Owlie Branding

Decision Making Simplified.

About

Owlie is an AI based Facebook Messenger app and bot, that simplifies user’s day-to-day decision-making process. User just has to feed in the question he wants to ask to his friends, Owlie will generate interactive polls that can be sent to friends via Facebook Messenger.
Note:The conceptualisation of this idea is explained in the previous project.

Team: Evan Scronce and Sohaj Singh Brar

My Role

Product Roadmap, User flow, Wireframe and prototype of the app, UI design, User testing of the app, Brand design, Messenger bot flow, Website design and development

Problem Statement

From the research (mentioned in the previous project), it was clear that decision-making conversations among groups is convoluted, inefficient and inconclusive in OTT messaging apps.

Messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, LINE, KakaoTalk etc. are used for having such conversations. But the response rate on these messaging apps decreases due to these factors:

No Response Aggregation

Inefficient Process — cluttered UI, typing hassle, deviation from topic, long time to conclude etc.

App Design

The design was supposed to come out to be high-end design something like Uber, which is acceptable by all demography. Along with that, it needs to be highly interactive and fluid with easiest and simplest way to create and answer polls. Other inspirations are: Paper (Facebook), Twitter Moments, Snapchat and Medium.

Owlie bot

Owlie Branding

Artworks

Includes wide variety of artworks like anatomy study, realistic sketching, modular, origami, stippling, hatching, caricatures, oil painting, digital art, concept art; to animation, clay modelling, paper mache, wiremodelling, thread art etc.

You can find more of my artworks on my facebook page

Monotype India Office Design

Work In Progress

Objective

Conceptualise and define a unique design for new Monotype Office building

My Role

Design direction in Interior design of new Monotype India office. Assisting the architects with creating the complete user journey, layout design, mood board, colour scheme, furniture design, wall elevation design, ceiling design etc.

Team

James Fooks Bale, Sohaj Singh Brar, TechnoSmart (Architects)

Problem with existing design

1. Archaic design
2. Had space only for workstations and meeting rooms
3. The new office building has low ceiling, hence less breathing space
4. Due to walled meeting rooms, the space seemed less airy and more congested
5. No out of the box design elements

Restrictions

1. Most of the work stations were fixed and could not be replaced
2. Many existing doors have thick wooden border around and cannot be replaced with full glass doors
3. The existing false ceiling cannot be removed from work stations

Concept

The idea is to increase the breathing space as much as possible. To achieve that, we removed the false ceiling from the cafe, gym, reception and boarding rooms area. Also to give the appearance of openness, the color palette consisted >90% of white and remaining as Monotype’s brand Blue and Red colours as highlights.

1. Cafe to have industrial look with white brick wall and wooden flooring

2. Reception will have the ceiling of vintage-industrial ceiling design to bring out feel of 130 years old company in contrast to white reception wall with light dispersed from the back of the white lettering carved out of it, hence giving it modern look. Back of the reception will have same white brick wall design of cafe

3. Central pillars to have ascending shades of grey with glass board covering to use them as brainstorming walls. The remaining two pillars will have the Monotype brand colours of Blue and Red

4. The two board rooms will be separated by glass wall that can be slide down to convert them into one huge meeting room. This glass wall will have Noto Typeface graphic design

5. Keeping the modern design extended to Gym, black with yellow color touch will run across this section

Final Design

"Aching loneliness of life"

Wrinkles are supposed to be a depiction of experience; but now, they are just of loneliness.

A life without a purpose, a life without loved ones. An aching life to live alone.

I hide behind my culture, I hide behind my believes, I hide behind my loneliness.

I hide my good eye to hide out from the beautiful, yet the depressing world.

"I shut my eyes to see"

How a hobby can change someones life and tangles everything around it and change the way of thinking.

How the obvious and predictable future can shatter just like the splashes of water.

How the thoughts are affected by the beliefs (which affect almost everything around), by the people who were always there, by the special ones who attract with their charm talent and beauty, by the destination-The Aim of life.

This art is about all that happened and changed things and about the things that can happen in future and can twist the past.

Past might be worse but there is always a hope and hope is always for a positive change.

Still one cannot live on hope or fate. It is all about what one does and attains by itself!

Family Assistant

Intelligent Bot for Family Groups

A family group bot in your messaging app that can handle many of your day to day family queries/tasks/problems.

Objective

Understand the family group dynamics and its problems and propose a solution.

Role

Primary Research, Secondary Research, Conceptualisation of the idea, SWOT analysis, B-model generation, Revenue estimation

Problem

Even today, when we have WhatsApp, Messenger and other messaging apps to chat/call/send location etc., still almost every person faces communication problems with their families — whether it is related to calling a family member for urgent document requirement when they are not around, or missing important notes in message clutter in family group, or receiving calls for information like “when will you reach home?”, “can you bring blah blah stuff from the market” during an important meeting.

So the problem was real, no doubt. But in order to understand all the concerns discreetly, I talked to people and did surveys from which I figured out the major problems to be —

Research

Interview — I talked to 5 individuals with following personas:

1. Recently married, 27, F. Have a big in-laws families. Work as software developer. Lives in a joint family.
2. Married, 35, Parent, working as project manager, Has a boy. Lives with her husband and son.
3. Unmarried, F, staying with parents.
4. Unmarried, 27. Staying with roommates - away from family.
5. Unmarried, M, 26. Staying with Family.

Survey — Conducted a survey among 35 individuals with the following background

From this survey, I got to know the following —

Characteristics of Family Groups (On the basis of research)

1. Multiple groups (avg.2) of different family circles
2. Users prefer one-to-one conversations outside of the group for discussions
3. Document sharing happens usually via Email and messaging apps (one-to-one)
4. Wishes, Jokes, Photos & Videos constitute the bulk of the conversations
5. Groups are used for decision-making
6. Important discussions happen over voicecalls
7. Some users stay on in family groups out of politeness

Solution

Intelligent bot that listens to group conversations and provides replies and proactive recommendations based on context

Features (Based on the research)

Key Features — 

1. Replies for common queries
• Official data (Social security number, etc)
• Contacts
• Birthdays
2. Summarize conversation
3. Locate members based on toggle
4. Create checklists, reminders and to-do lists
5. Decision making supports

How to gather data

In order to create an intelligent family conversation bot, we need to collect data of a particular family. This can be majorly done by-
a) Syncing various accounts (Fb, Drive etc.), contact list and calendars
b) Understanding group conversations using NLP and AI

Use Cases

Business Model

As there are a lot of use cases for this bot, many of these tasks will require a brand assistant to finish them. For e.g. Bot may remind you your sister’s birthday a week before because in order to buy her favourite item or the one she is recently looking to buy online, can be found on Amazon (brand) which will take 5 days to reach to her place.

Competition Analysis

MVP

From the research, it was understood that most of the problem exist in private conversations or personal media (sharing, creation etc.) But most of the existing products are already trying to solve problems in Media sharing. Private conversations is still an untapped area.

In order to simplify this problem, the story of the conversations in messages needs structuring. If all the messages are treated as different entities, as it happens in all messaging apps (other than iMessage in which Apple has recently released similar feature just for marking calendars), this problem regarding private conversations can never be solved.