With a wide selection of ways to memorialize and preserve the sweetest memories, having a time capsule app will allow users to relive life’s joyous moments. Whether it be specific events, weddings, or trips, it is a sweet way to allow a user to immerse in a specific moment in time. There is no time machine but a time capsule will do just that, transport the user back to a moment and place that their past selves would want their present selves to experience again.
With an endless amount of life moments there are some that can become blurry and be difficult to piece together years down the road for oneself or for someone else.
We want to know what type of capsule users would utilize so that we can provide sufficient options that allow for maximum satisfaction of creating the desired time capsule.
All participants have fond moments they wish to revisit and at minimum have a phone to capture or record their life events. Despite photos being in the camera roll, they can be forgotten and overlooked as time goes on. We want to assess the values and what type of vessel is ideal.
After conducting the surveys, what I've gathered are both expected and unexpected. The results of how often participants revisit their old photos display a normal distribution while preserving life moments expressed high importance. It was unexpected because I initially thought the act of revisiting and value of preserving life moments would be similarly expressed.
Major milestones, family memories, trips, vacations
Pictures, videos, scrapbooks
Blogs, custom videos, digital scrapbook, journaling, letters, music, notes, smell, songs, vlogs
Before diving into creating the elements and functionalities of the application, I conducted a competitive analysis of what the market is offering. Below are 4 different applications that emphasizes on customizing a time capsule for the future. Upon completing the research of options available, there are characteristics that I envisioned as opportunities for my application.
The personas created are focused on people who are creating capsules for future generations and someone creating for their future selves. In both scenarios, a time capsule is desirable and a pleasant surprise.
Relevant features were identified through competitor analysis and secondary research. Aside from the typical pages, the similar pages as competitors are produced to create a familiar sense as a user is browsing and comparing their options.
The homepage captures the ideation from homepage layouts to video selections through capsule details. The inspiration is from other video editing apps to enhance the sense of familiarity for users when editing video clips.
Next, time to refine, organize, and assemble.
The low-fidelity wireframes and inputted into the user to flow to visualize the pages users will encounter on the path.
.png)
.png)
The color palette was curated to create the impression of being timeless and enhance emotions. Additionally, the typography supplements the app in terms of simplicity and clarity. Components and icons were explored to ensure the relativity towards the brand design. In terms of the logo, I wanted to capture the essence of time in relation to time. The hourglass is reference to indicate as time passes, the capsule's unlock date is steadily approaching.
A usability study was conducted to examine the intuitiveness and practicality of the features created. Given today's social environment with its popular reel creations, I decided to build out the flow for a video capsule.
We’re creating a time capsule app to preserve users' memories and be opened at a certain time in the future. Before launching, we need to figure out if creating and locking the capsule is intuitive for users to do. We’d like to understand what specific challenges or needs users might face in the creation of a capsule and how to resolve issues identified.
Figure out if users can intuitively know how to create a time capsule.
The results were a favorable outcome. I was delighted to hear of the thoughts and insights participants shared throughout the study. The power of familiarity with similar apps were exhibited as participants knew what to expect when creating a video.
.png)
• Updated prototype so that the dash bar does not slide/scroll after the slider is dragged
I had numerous ideas on how to approach or design the various types of time capsules. I learned that I had to narrow down and organize my thoughts. Because of this, I was able to focus on a specific function without overlapping with other features.
By looking at what the competitors offered, it influenced me to explore different features and functions since it was focused on one type of time capsule. I took what most competitors offered and combined it altogether to create a product that will be comparative to the market.
