BitTorrent App

Role: Lead UX Designer

Team: BitTorrent Android App

Duration: 3 Months

Summary

When studying the BitTorrent App, the team and I realized new users rarely returned. Through conducting user interviews and usability tests, we learned the app lacked clear instructions on how to use the app which we hypothesized led to the drop-off in user retention. This led to my objective as the lead UX designer in creating an exceptional onboarding experience. Unfortunately the team could not validate by analytics whether the project was successful after the project and team were closed due to layoffs.

Problem Statement

When studying the BitTorrent Android App, the team and I realized new users rarely returned to the mobile app.

I began by Interviewing new users on the existing UX .

Usability Testing 7 users on the current UX Flow

7 Users navigated through the current app with a mix of users who were familiar with torrenting, and those that were not.

Key Takeaways

  • Onboarding – It was unclear how to download torrents and what file type to download.

  • Torrent Search – The search feature was jarring because it took users outside of the app.

  • Music Player – Users could not find music controls or easily identify what songs were playing.

We learned the app lacked clear instructions on how to use the app which we hypothesized led to the drop-off in user retention.

Hypothesis: There is a significantly lower new user retention rate due to unclear onboarding

This led to my objective as the lead UX designer in creating an exceptional onboarding experience.

I worked on three major enhancements to the training and functionality of the app

  1. Onboarding

  2. Torrent Searching

  3. Music playing

1. Onboarding

The goal is to create an unobtrusive onboarding experience. I studied the entire user journey, and then summarized them into three clear steps placed in the zero state of the app homepage.

ℹ Pairing iconography with text reinforced each significant step to successfully download a torrent.

Onboarding Results

Usability tests of the new design prototype were conducted on 4 users. The feedback was positive, with every user able to complete the 3 steps to downloading a torrent successfully with little to no trouble.

By clearly outlining the main steps for app usage, new users are able to easily understand and utilize all the app's features, leading to a great overall first experience.

2. Torrent Search

The search for torrents through the web is a strong feature but easily misunderstood due to the lack of visual cues. Users don’t expect to be taken out of the app and onto a web browser.

Torrent Search Results

The redesign of the search feature mimics a standard search bar to ease users into the experience of launching their web browsing app.

3. Music Player

The app has a powerful music feature but has unfinished engineering and poor UX, with music controls only found in a hidden queue tab.

Studying Music Apps

By conducting a competitive analysis of other popular music apps, it was evident they all follow the same design pattern of a mini-player and full-screen mode with working controls for pause, play, skip, back, shuffle, and repeat. This discovery lead me to propose these same features for the BitTorrent app to the engineering and product managers.

Music Playing Results

By making music-playing controls accessible on all app pages, this feature becomes significantly more usable and delightful for users. Our decision to create a mini-player that mirrors the behavior of other popular music apps ensures that users can easily and seamlessly interact with this feature without learning something entirely new.

Success Metrics

Seeing an increase in new user’s retention through Google Analytics would be one clear indicator of the success of the project.

The success of the onboarding and music player screens can be tracked by the increased average time spent.

To gauge the success of torrent searching, we can track for an increase in successful search inquiries through the app.

Unfortunately halfway through engineering implementation of the project, the project and team were disrupted due to layoffs never having the chance to validate the success of the designs.


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