RESEARCH

User Interviews

To get a better understanding of how other Twitter users interact with the platform, I interviewed 14 Twitter users about their experience with the app. The demographics of these users consisted of artists, shop owners, small businesses, lurkers, memers, etc.​

A few questions I asked these individuals are:

• Would you personally benefit from having an automatic tweet feature?
• What times are you most active on the platform?
• What content are you trying to post?
  
• How would you like the schedule a tweet?
• Would a scheduled retweet be similarly beneficial?
• For what purpose would you need these features?

Some key takeaways and responses I had were:

• Twitter users would love a function for automatic tweets, especially those trying to build a brand
• Many people's most active times do not align with when their followers are the most active, due to the global nature of the platform. Thus, many tweets tend to flop when tweeted at the wrong times
• A schedule function that was in-app is desired, that is easy to navigate and understand
  
• Tweets would be queued when they didn't have time to post on a specific day, or if followers were active at a bad time
• External apps to queue could be used, but privacy is a concern
  

IDEATION

User Journey Map

As this project is adding a feature to an existing application, instead of creating user flow diagrams, I opted for a user journey app instead. This helps me better understand the emotions and goals of the users while utilizing the new feature.

IDEATION

Wireframe Sketching

After sketching some user stories, I sat down in a library with some coffee and moved onto quick wireframe sketches to try and figure out how I wanted to implement the features from the user interviews. I opted against a user profile as it seemed like largely filler content, and mostly unnecessary. I tried to really narrow the focus to the necessary tasks. You can see some of my sketches below:

IDEATION

UI Design — Hi-Fi Mockups

Following the sketches, I had begun putting the design together on Figma. The most challenging aspect of this was adhering to Twitter's specific style guide and making sure this new feature didn't clash with the rest of the app. Because I spent a lot of extra time fiddling with my design sketches, I followed the wireframe sketch pretty closely. Perusing Twitter, I realized they didn't have too many confirm buttons, so I opted for an auto-save on swipe calendar.

REFLECTION

Final Thoughts

The last part is looking back at the design process and ponder the ways that I can grow. All in all, this was an incredibly fun solo study to solve one of my personal pains as a content creator on an app I spend way too much time on. ​

My challenges definitely included having to keep Twitter's branding in mind, and double and triple checking every design solution to make sure it was consistent with the message Twitter is trying to send. In the future, especially for these kinds of case studies of existing brands, I would 100% dedicate more time into the research phase of all. This will help me see and digest what Twitter's developers and CEO have to say about their vision and their branding, and designing solutions that might better convey those ideas to the users.

​I hope to create a design that is unmistakably "Twitter".