Dudel App

Discovering User Needs

The Challenge

How can I create an experience where people of all ages can fuel their creativity, do a focus task, and have some daily drawing practice?

Goals for tool

Usability

Users need to be able to get a new unique image every day that they can also draw on top of. They need a way to download their drawings so they can share them with their friends. They need a place where there can be free play as well.

Metrics to evaluate success

Time on the app, sessions per month, download clicks

Competitive Analysis

Analysis of the market

Looked over different drawing iOS apps on the market such as Sketchbook, SketchAR, Procreate, and many more. I also looked at a variety of drawing games.
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Goals:
Establish what the market looks like right now. See if there is a direct competitor in this specific idea. Learn how other drawing apps work.
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Results:
The higher-end sketch books allow users to zoom and pan while drawing. Drawing game apps felt very kiddish, not many felt like they could be for adults or any age. No one with this specific idea as an app.

Research, Brainstorms, and Wireframes

Research and learning

I used the Procreate app to test out my idea before designing or coding. anything. I had users of all ages test to make doodles with shapes.
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Goal:
My goal with this test was to see how users went around drawing on top of the shapes. I wanted to know what colors they used to doodle with, and their reaction to the game afterward.

Results:
The biggest takeaway was users of all ages loved the game. They came back for more, and they panned and zoomed to get a better view of the shape.

Brainstorming and Ideation

Once I gathered and observed users creating shapes and drawings I went on Figjam and started brainstorming ideas and sketching concepts.

Goal:
I needed to map out what exactly this app will be or become. Which other directions could I take a drawing app?
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Results:
I was able to map out group games, drawing education, sharing, profile, art therapy, and more. This was also the first initial drawings of the app pages and helped me go into the wireframe stage.

Wireframes

I took my sketches and started making a variety of wireframe pages.
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Goal:
I wanted to see how the pages would connect in a cohesive way where users wouldn't get lost or confused.

Results:
I was able to visually see how the app could take shape and I could also see how big of an engineering project my ideas would be. Seeing as this was my first iOS development project I need to scope down to a MVP.

Marketing Design Hurdle

Problem: Most drawing brands felt outdated and very immature.

When I was looking at different drawing game brands I noticed they all went in a very kiddish direction. I knew there was a border between kids and adults. I wanted to make sure I landed in both areas.

Most brands were afraid to take risks in their identity. The drawing apps felt very similar to each other. None tried something creative to really identify themselves.

Solution: Make doodling current and more universal for all ages.

Dudel is all about shapes and I knew the word mark needed to have an organic shape feeling. The colors needed to be accessible with black on top of them. The illustrations need to resemble the drawings our users would make.

Making it a cohesive brand and feel that is playful, fun, and different than any other drawing app out today.

Product Design Hurdle

Problem: My wireframes and designs are great for future thinking. But wouldn't be possible for time scoped.

It's great to get a view of where a product can go. See the whole picture of the future for the app. With Dudel I could see the app go in different directions. The app could be a platform where you learn how to draw and the shape practice is a great exercise for users to learn.

The app could be used for art therapy and could have a community of people decompressing stressful situations by doing a variety of art therapy exercises.

Solution: Determine what is the core of the product and how I can design and develop that for first launch.

After looking through the wireframes, concepts, and brainstorms I needed to find the core of the product.

The core of this experience was getting a new shape every day to doodle on top of. So I decided that I would tackle this first and it would be what I launch.

The only problem was, how do I build it?

High Fidelity MVP Design flow

Dark Mode

“I would rather see a unique shape on the practice card than the shape of the day.”
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Engineer Hurdle

Problem: A user needs a new unique shape every day to doodle on top of.

One of my biggest hurdles was, how does a user get a new unique shape to draw on every day? Talking it over to my iOS engineer mentors there were two different ways to go about it. One would be to create a shaping algorithm using SwiftUI Canvas. This way would be hard to make sure the shapes were different and unique enough for users to get. Another way would be to manually create each unique shape and identify each shape to a day of the year.

Solution: Create 366 unique shapes and get the user's calendar date on device to determine the shape.

I ended up going the manual route because it left me with more control over what I show the user and how the shapes matched the brand.
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I spent a month drawing shapes on Procreate and then sending them over to Illustrator to make them into vectors. After that, I was able to place them in XCode and create a way for users to get one each new calendar day.

Vector Shapes

Creating Dudel was like a love letter to building products. I truly had a blast creating it. There were some very frustrating times as well, but I'm grateful I had a great community of iOS engineers here in Utah to give me advice.
The release date is June 2023, so sadly I can't share any metrics as of yet. Stay tuned.