GnoME

Pronounced Know Me.

Tasked with building an iOS app as part of the Aggies in Tech Program, my group decided to create a social networking app that prompted users with a question a day. An ambitious choice for a first app.

Motivation

We saw apps like BeReal and Snapchat encourage their massive audiences to log on daily. Aiming to build an authentic platform, we came up with asking users daily questions to let their friends get a better sense of them. Hannah came up with the name GnoME and within an hour we had a proposal to build on.

We were given three user testing surveys. Core Idea=>Positive

Execution=>Mixed

Writing joke answers to questions kept me entertained during the design phase.

First Design

The first rendition of GnoME was far from perfect. We liked what we had but knew it needed to be different. Because of our gnome mascot, we wanted to stick to earthy colors in our design. This made the app look somewhat washed out. Text is practically invisible in some places, users didn't understand the unique like button, and it overall looked unappealing.

Besides looks, there were also functional flaws. We thought a leaderboard that gave users points for answering the daily question and getting likes would keep users engaged like a Snapscore. Our testers tore this idea apart. They also didn't like the idea of having a timer for answering the daily question.

We didn't show the testers the customizable Gnomes we planned to have on users' profiles because we didn't want to overwhelm them. We realized this functionality could be difficult to implement and didn't add a lot of value to the user's experience. We are building a Minimum Viable Product right now and shouldn't be focusing on the fluff that can be added later.

I acknowledge the new color accessibility problems later!

Modifications

Our color palette had to change. Our app is meant to be fun and casual. We felt using darker colors would be more suitable for our targeted audience. Still trying to stick with a nature inspired color palette, a dark blue-green was our choice. A safe option that brings feelings of loyalty and is commonly used for social media. I really liked the contrast the orange brought. It was nice on the eyes and could attract attention to parts of the app.

We nixed the leaderboard and changed the like button to a mushroom. Our search went from being a tab on the task bar to a search bar at the top of the home page (not pictured). Our comments button in the first rendition brought users to a different page. I was striving for a super fluid user experience so I designed the drop-down comment system that let users see comments and keep scrolling to other posts. Problem! What if I have 500 friends? If I open all their comment sections without closing any the app will crash!!! Solution: The comments will fold when the users scroll far enough past the post or opens another posts comments.

A suggestion we got from testers, professors, and peers was that it would be cool if you could guess who gave what answer. But I don't think people want to go through hundreds of posts a day to guess who said what. Adapting this idea, we made it so that the app would randomly select 10 friends and their answers on last week's question that users can guess the answer to. Now you were encouraged to remember things about your friends.

See the whole Figma here.

Current Design

The new design definitely looks better, but it still has problems. The biggest is color accessibility. That orange that I love so much is a horrible background for text. WhoCanUse basically told me I hate color-blind people. My solution is to incorporate the color in places where there isn't text.

The current design also has a lot of black text over our dark blue-green background that should be white for accessibility. It's a small tweak that can be modified in our code.

The customizable gnomes also still exist. I don't see those being super popular.

Code

Naysa was our chief programmer but I cracked open XCode whenever I could to help. I mostly worked on the UI. Earlier in development I made a nonfunctioning front end of the app that had demonstrated how posts, comments, and profiles would appear.

Our progress stopped right about where we were in the video. Summer internships slowed down development, and eventually, the team fell out of love with the idea. Divorce really is the hardest on the children.

Our professor wanted a PowerPoint presentation showcasing our app. I thought we could be a little more creative than PowerPoint.

Closing Thoughts

I still think it was a neat idea. I didn't expect it to get millions of downloads but it may have found a niche community if it ever released. I gave a presentation on why our team wasn't able to finish the app in Spring 2024 to Cohort 1 of Aggies in Tech. I believe it came down to information hoarding and improper management. I encouraged them to use Scrum or some kind of similar methodology when working on their projects.

We entered the McFerrin Ideas challenge a year after we stopped working on the project to see if the judges thought it was interesting. We proposed it could also be adapted as an internal tool to help build community within organizations. They did not get the value.

I didn't get into all the functionality and features we have planned but our presentation does a good job of that. ↓