Sorted App
Reducing Cognitive Load & Organizing Content Efficiently
In today’s information age, the sheer volume of available content often leads to information overload—a state where individuals struggle to process or act on the constant influx of data. Recognizing this growing challenge, I embarked on my first end-to-end product design project to address this issue.
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This case study outlines the process and solution behind the development of Sorted, a mobile application designed to streamline content consumption by helping users save, organize, and prioritize content effectively.
Duration :
My Role :
2 months
User Research | User Persona |
Affinity Mapping | User Journey Mapping | Ideation Workshop | User Flows | Mid-fidelity designs | Usability Testing | Prototyping
Prototype :
Tools :
Figma | Figjam | Miro | Userbrain | Ottr.ai | Notion | Google Docs
Problem
Information overload is real.
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The average individual is exposed to more content than they can meaningfully engage with in a lifetime. According to cognitive load theory, our working memory can only process a limited amount of information at any given time. However, the rise of infinite scrolling, algorithmic feeds, and cross-platform content recommendations exacerbates this overload.
While many maintain “save-for-later” lists (bookmarks, note-taking apps, YouTube Watch Later, Instagram Collections), they often become cluttered and unused, leading to a sense of unproductivity.
01.
How might we we help users reliably save and recall important content?
02.
How might we make content organization seamless and effective?
03.
How might we reduce cognitive overload while boosting engagement?
Solution
We created a mobile application - Sorted - A Streamlined Content Management Tool.
It helps users save content links from any app and across any format - and features that aim to reduce the cognitive burden of managing saved content while enabling users to stay productive and informed.
One-Click Save with Shelves
Auto-save content from any app with added features like Shelves to categorize, Quick Reminders to set nudges, and Set Priority to curate the Sorted Home Feed.
Decluttered Home Feed with Priority Sorting
It will help users keep more important items ‘top of mind’ with easy, quick navigation.
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Since decluttering the saved lists was one of the key goals, we wanted to make it easy for users to compartmentalize their saved pieces of content.​
This would help them make quick decisions when they have time to engage with a piece of content.
Collaboration and Sharing
Process Overview
With an understanding that design processes are non-linear, we knew we would need to adapt and use the right tools to communicate what’s required to find the right solution.
To learn and guide us through a product development thought process, we took inspiration and learnings from the Design Thinking framework and adopted a user-centred design process. With focus on the user, we set out to understand the pain points and find gaps to define the right problem. We would then proceed to present a usable and useful solution.
Research
To begin with, I wanted to understand if and in what ways other people shared this problem. It was crucial to grasp users' current content consumption patterns, analyze the pain points, and find gaps in the current experience.
This would help us define the right problem.
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We planned and conducted User Interviews with 7 participants. The interviews were intended to be broad and open. We actively listened to the participants to understand their behaviours and experiences with content consumption.
Research Goal - To understand how people reliably save and recall online content/information that they need to consume at a later time​
No. of interviewees - 7​
Target Audience - 20-45 years of age, working professionals, who consume online content regularly​
The responses were recorded and collected on a Figjam file, where we then rearranged all the information into groups to find common patterns of user habits, experiences and pain points.
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We prepared a script to guide us through the interviews.
KEY OBSERVATIONS AND FINDINGS
1.
There are multiple sources of content consumption - some consume news via Instagram and some go to YouTube to upskill their career
2.
They try to save lists but those lists keep growing and becomes difficult to get back to the saved items
3.
People value good content and like to keep up with trending topics
4.
People experience content bombardment which makes them feel unproductive
I also discovered that people spend more time on their phones for any kind of content consumption (Social media, Search engines, News, etc.) than on any other device. Source
Competitive Analysis
To investigate the current offerings in the market, we performed a UX and competitor analysis. The following competitors were considered based on participants mentioning them at the user interview stage.
Most content consumption platforms including social media apps like YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and other content platforms like Netflix and Spotify have their own "Wishlist" feature to save for later.
Key Insights
1.
CONTENT OVERLOAD
Participants reported feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of saved content, which led to decreased productivity.
2.
CLUTTERED LISTS
The lack of effective organization in existing tools made it challenging to retrieve or engage with saved content.
3.
LIMITED REMINDERS
Users often forget about saved items due to inadequate nudges or prioritization features
4.
FRAGMENTED ECOSYSTEM
Content spread across multiple platforms resulted in inconsistent saving experiences and increased mental load
We found there was a mismatch between the complexity and features available which was one of the key reasons our users failed to adopt any of these solutions.
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There was a clear space for a product to fill the visible gaps in the market.
These insights provided the foundation for defining user needs and crafting a solution that integrates organization, prioritization, and engagement into a seamless experience.
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Based on insights, we created "Ankita," a working professional who often saves content across formats but struggles to engage with it meaningfully.
Creating scenarios would further assist us in understanding the use cases and the pain points.
Mapping Ankita’s User Journey for these scenarios would be my next step to discovering the Windows of Opportunity.
Scenario 01
Ankita is out with her colleagues and one of them happened to mention a documentary they watched. Ankita gets interested and wants to remember to check it out. She quickly adds the name on her note-taking app, Google Keep.
Scenario 02
Ankita is listening to her favourite Tech Podcast and the host recommends reading an article that came out in a reputed blog. She searched for the article and found it but doesn’t want to leave the podcast unfinished.
Scenario 03
Ankita has recently picked up an interest in cooking. She gets excited about trying out new recipes. While scrolling Instagram, she gets a lot of food-related reels on her feed. She saves them to a collection but often forgets to try them out.
“Ankita needs a way to reduce noise and keep up with relevant content to utilise her time better and feel more productive and informed.”
How Might We
Help Ankita save important content across all formats and platforms?
Make it easier for Ankita to declutter and prioritize saved content?
Enhance Ankita’s productivity and help her achieve her goals?
Ideation
With clearly defined problem statements, we diverged into ideating possible solutions.
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Keeping our focus on them, we brainstormed ideas and divided the design solution into Must Have and Good to Have features.
Must-have Features
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Priority feature which enables a self-chosen and prioritised content feed
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Option to one-click save without adding any information
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Add reminder nudges to get back to the saved item
Good-to-have features
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‘Shelves’ where the user can organise the saved item
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Have shared ‘Shelves’ with friends for a collaborative space to save weblinks
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Add context to the item saved for better recall
User Flows and Wireframes
TASK 01 - SAVE A LINK FROM A CONTENT PLATFORM
TASK 02 - ACCESS THE SAVED LINK ON SORTED APP
Moving on after evaluating and discussing the sketches between us, we developed a working prototype with mid-fidelity screens.
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This would help us quickly run a round of Usability Testing before moving to high-fidelity designs.
Usability Testing
Once we had a minimum viable prototype ready, we wanted to get it into the hands of some real users and carry out a round of Usability Testing.
5 people participated in this test - 3 were remote and 2 were in person.
Key insights from the user testing sessions were:
a.) 4/5 people were able to complete the given tasks with ease
b.) 3/5 users could not understand the "Drafts" icon.
We decided to have labels in the navigation tab
c.) UI could be cleaner with clarity on the navigation tab icons.
We will choose simpler colours and font for better aesthetics and make the UI uncluttered, and simple with more white space.
d.) No clear feedback to the user if and where the link has been saved.
Add clarity on system status which will let the user be more confident about how he is using the system.
High-fidelity Design & Prototype
Key UI Components
PRIORITY ICONS
Simple visual markers to help users identify high-priority content.​
We used the users' familiarity with prioritizing things both fully and half-heartedly. These icons aim to establish an easy association with priorities.
CONTENT CARDS
Content cards were created keeping the important properties and clean UI in mind.
​Collapsible designs for easy scrolling and focus on relevant details without straining themselves with too much information.
SHELVES AND REMINDERS
Seamlessly integrate organization and engagement tools.
Shelves to categorize, Quick Reminders to set nudges, and Set Priority to curate the Sorted Home Feed.
Next Steps
1.
ENHANCING CROSS DEVICE FUNCTIONALITY
A "Push to Device" feature to improve accessibility across devices.
2.
FURTHER USER RESEARCH
Iterative testing to refine sorting and engagement features.
3.
TIME SENSITIVE CONTENT
Introducing a "Shelf Life" feature for expiring content (e.g., current affairs)
Takeaways and Learnings
The project helped me to learn more about the process of a design thinking framework. Learned to do better visuals and manage them effectively by creating a small component library in Figma.
Since this was my first UX project, I enjoyed working through the research and design process. In hindsight, I can see how I can improve on not letting my biases affect any design decisions.