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Prosody

End-to-End Mobile App MVP

January 2023 - March 2023

An edtech app for mobile that facilitates poetry writing workshops for groups of users.

Problem

For most adults, mainstream education only sparingly covers poetry. We may learn how to read poetry in order to answer test questions in school, or how to write poetry as a series of formulaic exercises, but few people in the modern world ever learn to enjoy and understand written poetry, or to express themselves freely in writing it.

 

With poetry existing only at the margins of popular culture, those with a new interest in learning to read and write poetry for enjoyment are often at a loss for how to find poetry that interests them, how to enjoy reading it, and how to experiment with new strategies for expressing themselves as they write.

Solution

As I researched and reflected on a solution, I kept returning to my experiences in college creative writing classes. The most valuable and exclusive resource in these classrooms was the instructor, and I began to conceptualize Prosody as taking on the role of a writing instructor for a group of new writers.


In order to be a successful writing instructor, I wanted Prosody to be able to accomplish the following goals:

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  • Provide Inspiration. New writers often lack a depth of knowledge of existing poetry. Prosody needs to introduce users to a variety of thought-provoking poetry to help them get inspired.

  • Engage writers with thoughtful prompts. The blank page is the most intimidating part of the writing process. Prosody needs to provide users with specific prompts and writing exercises to get users writing.

  • Facilitate collaborative workshops. Writing is not a solitary exercise! Prosody needs to help writers work together to give and receive feedback on new work

Subject Matter Expert Interviews

Because my goal for Prosody was for it to act as the instructor for a creative writing class, I started by interviewing some creative writing instructors.

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I interviewed two of my college creative writing professors. One teaches poetry writing, one teaches fiction writing. I’ve summarized key info from these interviews below.

Interview Insights

  • The factors that stop people from writing include lack of time, lack of deadlines, and lack of an audience. Workshops are invaluable partially because they impose deadlines and create an audience

  • The goal of a workshop is not to find the correct direction for a writer’s work, but to provide them with a diversity of interesting options for how to continue working

  • A good writing prompt imposes interesting constraints on a writer. Too much freedom and generality make it challenging to begin writing, and specific requirements give writers a place to start

Competitor Analysis

After refining my vision for Prosody’s features through interviews, I did some research on some of the most popular digital tools for poetry writing and workshopping. These included mobile apps, websites, and desktop apps.

While these products showcase a range of useful features, what is most critical to my analysis is their intended social use case.

These competitors all fall into two major camps: products intended for use by a solo user, or products intended for facilitation in a classroom by an educator.

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My goal for Prosody was to create a unique social experience, unlike any of the other tools on the market. 

Solo Experience

These tools are all intended for use by a solo user, creating or reading poetry entirely within the app’s interface.

Poetry Foundation

HaikuJAM

Write or Die

Facilitated Experience

These tools focus on collaborative work, but they are intended for facilitation by a professional instructor.

Book Creator

Google Jamboard

User Interviews

In order to better understand what kinds of relationships people have to poetry writing, I interviewed four potential users.


My questions focused on their experiences reading and writing poetry, their experiences in writing classes, and their experiences with digital writing tools.


I’ve summarized some of the key info from these interviews below.

Interview Insights

  • People who are interested in poetry don’t know where to look to find new ideas and directions for their writing.

  • New or casual writers feel overwhelmed by reading poetry. They don’t know where to start, how to find poetry that they like, or how to connect to famous poems.

  • Some people are suspicious of apps based on artistic output that rely on social media features. Users report that this feels shallow, overly commercial, or that they feel too vulnerable sharing with strangers.

Building Empathy

After reviewing my research findings, I created some Point of View statements and ‘How Might We?’ questions.

These tools help connect my initial research to discrete goals I want to achieve in order to help my users.

POV

  • I’d like to help new writers who don’t have access to a writing class learn to participate in a workshop, because this is one of the most important skills for a continued writing practice.

  • I’d like to provide a variety of interesting prompts and readings for users, because news writers struggle to start writing projects

HMW

  • How might we connect the discrete experiences of reading, writing, and workshopping into a unified in-app experience?

  • How might we facilitate a social, in-person workshop experience via users’ mobile devices?

  • How might we emphasize usability to make poetry writing feel more accessible?

The User

Rhys

Rhys writes some poetry occasionally as part of a journaling practice. He is interested in learning more about poetry, but doesn’t really know where to look for reading material or how to focus on expanding his perspective as a writer.

Core Needs

  • structured guide to participating in a workshop

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  • exposure to diverse reading material

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  • a variety of interesting writing exercises to help generate ideas in new ways

Pain Points

  • does not have the time or money to take a writing class

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  • feels overwhelmed by the amount of published poetry available, doesn’t know where to start reading

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  • hard to feel motivated when he’s just writing for himself

Design

User Flow

Before I began making any visual design choices for Prosody, I created a detailed user flow. I had a lot of ideas for how the app might work and what features it might have, so I knew I would need this detailed roadmap for everything I would be building.

Sketches

Branding

Brand Values

Approachable: because Prosody is intended to help new writers, its branding must feel welcoming and inviting

Classic: I want users to feel connected to poetry as a long tradition. Branding should reference the literary tradition.

Creative: users need to feel confident in creating something new. Branding needs to convey a sense of lightness, possibility, and excitement.

Logo

Prosody’s logo consists of a bough of myrtle leaves draped across simple serif text. Myrtle leaves are associated with Erato, the classical Greek muse of lyric poetry.


The logo is also inspired by lettering in illuminated medieval European manuscripts, and is meant to convey growth, inspiration, and expansion.


Here is my logo as a wordmark and logomark.

Mid Fidelity Wireframes

Key Features

Writing Prompt

Users can quickly jump between the three sections by tapping on section titles here.

The end of the writing prompt invites users to upload their response to the prompt.
 

There is also a reminder to work with pen and paper first, reinforcing Prosody’s role as a tool in the user’s writing process, not a replacement or home for the whole practice of writing.

Each writing prompt consists of three sections: a header image, a published poem, and a writing prompt with thematic connections to the poem.

Writing Prompts are the feature of the app in which Lora, my serif typeface, appears the most frequently. I want the reading experience here to feel grounded and connected to the tactile experience of reading a book or literary journal.

Workshop

Each workshop session begins with a writing exercise, designed to help all users in the group warm up their creative minds, generate new ideas for future writing, and bond through doing a shared activity.


These exercises are different each time, so I made the design choice to segment them inside of this little rectangular card. This choice lets me get creative with a variety of different possible interaction features (like this timer) without the experience feeling disjointed.

Many different screens like this guide users through each step of the worskhop process.


A writing workshop is a social, conversational activity. My goal for these designs is to communicate instructions at a glance, so users are able to easily switch between reading onscreen instructions, and communicating socially with their writing cohort during the workshop.

The worshop culminates with users typing up feedback that is saved as annotations in the ‘Portfolio’ section of the writer’s app.


This is meant to encourage users to edit their poetry over time, and makes it easy to access all of their feedback without having to rely on their own notetaking.

Defining Success

Metrics for Success in User Testing

1. Users are able to complete task flows with minimal error

2. Any user errors are quickly and easily corrected.

3. Users give positive feedback about their experience using the product, including usability, aesthetics, and accessibility

User Testing

In order to validate my design choices and identify areas for iteration, I conducted guided user testing with an interactive prototype.


I recruited six participants. Three of them took on the role of a Prosody user giving feedback in a workshop session, and three of them took on the role of a user receiving feedback.

“ I really like the design choices for the different screen layouts during the workshop. It was easy to tell when the app wanted me to look closely at my phone, and when I was supposed to be looking up and talking to the people in the workshop with me. ”

“ The dashboard and poetry prompts look beautiful. Reading through those felt like looking at a literary magazine. ”

“ All the on-screen instructions were clear. I’ve never done a poetry workshop before, and I could totally tell what I needed to do at each new step. ”

Key Changes

Before

After

I changed my body typeface from EB Garamond to Lora. At the size I wanted to use, Garamond’s x-height was just too small, and some users had trouble reading body text during testing.

Before

After

I added a filter / sort button to the Past Prompts section of the dashboard. There’s only four cards in the prototype I built, but this would be an important feature for users who have been using the app for a longer period of time.

Before

I removed this entire screen from my prototype! During testing, it became clear that it just wasn’t necessary, and the app worked even better if users were just immediately taken to the screen following this one.

Interactive Prototype

Reflection and Next Steps

Research

I had a blast researching for this project! Literature is one of my great passions, and it was fascinating to learn through competitor research how there is still so little creativity in the integration of technology and literature.


My SME interviews were fascinating. Perhaps more than any of my other research phases, these interviews were incredibly illuminating for the direction of the project. And, of course, it was wonderful to catch up with my former teachers.

Visual Design

From the beginning of this project, I knew that I wanted to focus on crafting a really stylish, sleek-looking product. I went in with a strong focus on typography and graphic design, and I’m really happy with how the final results look.

Asymmetrical Design

This was the real challenge of working on Prosody. As I developed the concept of a writing workshop guide, I struggled with how to integrate multiple users interacting with one another and their devices in different ways at the same time.


I was ultimately most inspired by asymmetrical multiplayer games like The Jackbox Party Pack or Kahoot. It’s a big ask for users to alternate between looking closely at their devices and then looking away from their devices to accomplish a social task, and I hope that I’ve pulled that off here.

Next Steps

  • build a Portfolio tab, including features for saving and editing drafts of a poem

  • create a group creation flow, with setting for meeting frequency, group admin, and invites for new users

  • finish developing options and menus within screens in the user flow you’ve seen presented here

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