SUMMARY

The goal was build a 0-1 professional desktop editor for the next generation of photographers. It would be built on the web and intended to be the future of VSCO’s core product.

THE CHALLENGE

Launch a high quality MVP that users would love with limited time and resources. Establish an entirely new design system on the web in the process.

USER NEEDS

Our target users started practicing photography with easy to use mobile apps like VSCO. Now many of their users are more serious about their practice, needing a larger screen size and more professional workflows. Existing professional editors were overly complicated and felt old to them.

Role

Staff Product Designer

SKILLS

0-1 Product Development
Market Research
Product Strategy
User Research
User Experience
Prototyping
Visual Design
Design Systems

Structural Foundations

The first task was to define all of functionality needed for an MVP. The team ruthlessly prioritized the most important features in order to launch quickly. Wireframes were used to explore simple structures and intuitive interfaces. Presets are a critical part of VSCO’s ecosystem and our users’ workflow. They became a prominent part of the app.

New Paradigms

It is common for our users is to apply the same look to multiple images, so they can be presented as a set. In order to better support this, batch editing was added to the MVP. Using an entirely new paradigm for batch editing, users can edit directly in gallery view.

Other features were given incremental improvements. Crop included an option to choose an aspect ratio by previewing all of them as an overlay. This novel interaction enabled users to more easily understand what a particular aspect ratio meant for their image and how it compared to others.

User Research

Getting user feedback was essential throughout the process and done in several ways. Moderated interviews were conducted on a prerelease version of the app to understand overall usability and usefulness. Unmoderated testing was conducted on prototypes to for specific features like batch editing. Users could also provide feedback in app, which gave the team ongoing insights.

Design System

VSCO had a bare bones design system for the mobile app and nothing for the web. An entirely new design system was built and used across VSCO’s website.

Ongoing Development

VSCO Studio on desktop was launched on time, but work didn’t stop there. A freemium version shipped after the initial launch and quickly increased our users by 10x. A frequent request from our users was simple more editing features. Tools like grain and fade were added. Other features like undo/redo and before/after compare were shipped to address users’ biggest concerns.

Outcomes

• Strong foundation for VSCO’s future core product
• 2 design patents pending
• Growing active user base
• Nominated for a Webby award
• A new design system was build for the web