Motorola - Prynt Placement Study
Background
This idea for a printer that attached to Motorola’s modular phone came out of an internal brainstorm that I led, focused around new concepts for the modular platform.
Competitive analysis was conducted with a device I selected based on similar tech specifications to the device the Motorola product team was thinking of building.
Study Goals
Gather feedback on the use of Prynt, an instant printer that attaches to an iPhone, to better understand a comparable experience to Motorola's intended design.
Research Method
Use over time competitive analysis
60-min 1:1 in person interviews
Observe setup
2-week diary study
Obtain contextual data
60-min 1:1 in person interviews
Evaluate experience
Work Partners
Product manager
UX designer
Software engineer
Hardware engineer
Marketing lead
Polaroid app development partner
My Role
Selected method
Selected competitive device to use
Selected recruiting criteria and drafted screener
Worked with recruiting service to schedule participants
Worked with team to identify research questions
Drafted discussion guide
Drafted and monitored journaling activity
Moderated 3 rounds of sessions
Conducted analysis and wrote findings report
Participants
5 iPhone 6/7 users between ages of 18-23
Take photos with phone 2-3x per week
Have printed photos within the last 3 months
2 had their own Fuji instant-print cameras
Key Research Questions
Where is the Prynt device when pictures are being taken?
When in the process are people printing pictures? (immediately pics taken, or after)
How does this device feel in hand when it’s attached to the phone?
Where is it stored when not in use?
What do people do with the pictures after they’re printed?
Key Research Findings
How to use Prynt wasn’t initially clear.
People didn't know that they had to “turn ON” the device in order to print. They assumed they would be able to print once Prynt was attached to their phone.
It’s not clear how to turn the device ON because there are conflicting LEDs that light up at different times when that button is pressed.
Hard to find the print button at first because the print icon is not easily recognizable.
People liked the extensive editing options in the app and compared it to Instagram.
Some expressed the desire to print a different image ratio than the 2x3 image, like printing a square image from Instagram.
Everyone expected higher image quality.
People expect Polaroid / instant-print photos to have a vintage-y look to the images, but expect a higher quality image coming from a phone.
They directly compared the printed image to the image on screen and were disappointed that they didn’t match.
Impact
Worked with the software engineers to try and make the quality of the printed image as close to the quality of the image on-screen.
Worked with the UX designers to add images to the setup flow to make it clear how to use the device.
Worked with product managers and hardware engineers to remove the physical power button from the device, and allow the device to warm up and print images when the software “print” button was pressed.
Hindsight is 20/20
To better inform the value of this product, I would have recruited a range of ages either based on Motorola’s target consumer or with the help of a larger quantitative study.