Rocketbook - Snapcast
Providing an easy, time saving way for users to send and update scans in live time to cross collaborate with teammates or co-workers.
Overview
The Rocketbook mobile app is a way for users to take notes, scan, and blast their notes to their favorite cloud platform, such as, Google Drive or Evernote. Snapcast is a scanning mode that allows users to share their notes in live time through a unique URL.
The Problem
Upon joining Rocketbook, I learned that Snapcast is a feature that has little to no engagement from our users. Honestly, at the time, there was no "real" issues with Snapcast other than it being a non-popular feature because it was a feature our users didn't need. In fact, the team and I had many discussions revolving around getting rid of Snapcast in our app.
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However, when COVID-19 hit and the world shifted to remote settings, Snapcast started to have higher engagements than ever before. We seized this opportunity and Snapcast was one of the first features we prioritized to improve.
Brainstorming
When we discovered that the engagement with Snapcast was increasing, we all asked ourselves "Why?" "Why now?" "What about the pandemic and remote settings is causing a Snapcast surge?"
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Surprisingly, the answer wasn't that complicated - Majority of our users are educators, students and working professionals. The 3 groups needed a way to easily collaborate remotely and Snapcast allowed them to send live snapshots of their scans to anybody (not just Rocketbook users) and update scans in live time.
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We were thrilled to see Snapcast finally take off but we also knew the Snapcast's reign wouldn't last long at its current state. If we wanted Snapcast to be successful this time, we knew we couldn't be "scrappy" and should invest the time in hearing from our users.
Research
I conducted 13 user interviews to understand their current pain points and to figure out what future features or improvements would be valuable and make their workflows more seamless. We wanted to make sure to get a non-biased feedback so we interviewed people of different occupations and ages. Despite the wide range of occupations, our different groups of users wanted similar features and they were able to point out what we considered our main pain points. ​
With the majority of our users switching into remote settings, we saw the need to add in features that assisted the new way of collaborating.
Design
For this particular project, I didn't feel the need to start from sketches because Snapcast was a feature that already existed in the app and the asks from our users were straightforward. Essentially, the features users asked for were standard features any app with camera utilization carried.
The Outcome
Through occasional emails, the users I interviewed would email me telling me the added features to Snapcast improved their workflow. While Rocketbook isn't necessarily known for its Snapcast scanning mode, the team and I felt incredibly lucky to assist a big portion of our users during this difficult time. Remote learning, teaching, or working isn't easy in any way but we were delighted to be part of something that makes this hard time a little more bearable!