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Redesign Project Proposal for SugarSync

Written by Mike Sinkula, Christina Ntouniaoglou, Shubha Sastry, Ruby Kuo and Jake Sparling on October 10th, 2011 for HCDE518 at the University of Washington

Introduction

SugarSync provides an online file storage, file sharing and backup service. This San Mateo, CA company was originally founded in 2004 as Sharpcast, and has gone through three rounds of funding (2005, 2006 and 2008) for a total venture backing of $29.5 million. Since the co-founders left the company in 2008, current CEO Laura Yecies has led the company in expanding through an aggressive business and product growth strategy.

SugarSync’s flagship product, by the same name, utilizes the proprietary SugarSync Universal Sync Platform which allows for non scheduled backups of files. The SugarSync Platform API was launched in March 2010 and allows for 3rd party integration into the Universal Sync Platform.

SugarSync targets many types of users including but not limited to:

1. Home users who require easy backup and file sharing capability
2. Students working on class files from multiple locations and collaborating with other students
3. Business users who require file sharing access from multiple devices
4. IT managers who manage business user accounts for their company

SugarSync’s features include:

1. Many tiered pricing options (including free)
2. Broad device/OS support
3. File syncing between multiple computers/devices
4. Data encryption
5. File and folder sharing
6. File type specific features like music playback and photo viewing
7. Collaboration tools for multiple users
8. Resource allocation for multiple users

Sugar Sync as a company is most interested in:

1. Revenue generation (main business goal)
2. Expanding in Business and Mobile sectors—they have grown 10% since the start of Business edition and would like to continue to channel their efforts to this.
3. Tagging along with large equipment manufacturers, currently it is Lenovo—they boosted their sales by 20% in the small and medium business world
4. Supporting a broad variety of mobile platforms, supporting iOS in the iPhone and iPad, Google’s Android, the BlackBerry operating system, Nokia’s Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. The company plans to add Windows 7 phone soon (77% of SugarSync’s mobile subscribers use one of these platforms).

Redesign Process Motivation

SugarSync has several competitors, so creating a positive experience for the new user is important. Without a good experience from the beginning, users will be tempted to try another service that is easier or more suited to their needs.

We have decided to focus our redesign on the new user experience, which includes:

1. Service overview
2. Sign up
3. Tutorial
4. Application download
5. Application install
6. Getting started with the service

Through our research activities, we will determine the exact areas that need to be changed.

Activities for Design Studies

UCD is a discipline for collecting and analyzing user requirements (Courage & Baxter, 2005).  And, in this uncertain world, understanding your customers and their abilities, needs and desires is the solution to designing desirable products or services (Methoiz, Schauer, Verbal & Wilken, 2008).

Although there is no universal construction on the selection of study methods, the following principles are suggested by many usability experts:

1. The objects of study or what the type of problems
2. The nature of the UCD method
3. The nature of the product
4. The nature of user task and context
5. In which phase of product life-cycle
6. Constraints: like time, cost, and skills available

Every method has its strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, the other essential recommendation is that researchers should use multiple assessment methods to do their studies (Je ries et al. 1991; Molich et al. 1998; Molich et al. 1999; Nielsen 1993).

After deliberating these suggestions, we have chosen 1) competitor analysis, 2) contextual inquiry, and 3) usability testing as our three methods for our redesign project.

Three research plans will be developed for these design activities later. For now, we will discuss why these three activities have been chosen and how are we going to use them to learn about our target users’ needs and requirement. We will then use these methods to fulfill our goal of this redesign project.

First Study Activity: Competitor Analysis & Wants/Needs Analysis

In this stage, we want to learn how this and other online storage providers consider their target user needs.  We will attempt to answer the question of if their target users are satisfied and if so, with what kind of design.

We have chosen Competitor Analysis because it is an effective way to learn the weaknesses and strengths of a product. The data collected can be qualitative or quantitative, and therefore easy to analyze and give a systematic overview. Moreover, by comparing features, market strategy, and user experience among different products, we can determine how competitors design their experience and what overall user preferences are in the marketplace.

This design activity is usually used in the concept stage, and although this method seems more market research oriented and not performed with users, it can still be used to understand target users’ needs. In addition to competitor analysis, we will also conduct a survey with convenient samples and use those results to contrast with our competitor analysis findings.

Second Study Activity: Contextual Inquiry

Contextual Inquiry is a technique for examining and understanding users and their workplace, tasks, issues and preferences. In addition, making customers real to the organization and design team is the first step in developing a product that connects to their target users (Methoiz, Schauer, Verbal & Wilken, 2008). Therefore, after we draw our assumption of target users’ needs from the first design activity, we believe that we can fine tune and solidify these ideas through the contextual inquiry.

Contextual Inquiry can be conducted at various stages, however using it in the early stages can provide a larger benefit to the product. This activity not only provides the opportunity for designers or researchers to learn what target users do in a real setting, it also allows them to combine different research methods instead of purely observing users. Researchers can collect multiple types of data to create different models, such as work model, sequence model, flow model, artifact model, and physical model for their studies.

Our users will likely have multiple contexts and the tasks they perform will vary per context.  For example, one user might use SugarSync in more than one device and place. Therefore, this second design activity is one of the best choices for our study purpose.

Third Study Activity: Prototyping & Usability Testing

Usability testing is a technique for ensuring that the intended users of a system can carry out the intended tasks efficiently, effectively and satisfactorily. The goal with usability testing is to better understand how real users interact with your product and to improve the product based on the test results.

Therefore, we are going to use a prototype of the redesigned elements to make sure we are addressing the users’ requirements. Usability testing plays a role in each stage of the design process. Just like the major principle of UCD design, using it as early as possible to advance the benefits for your study is a common consensus.

In this activity, we will design a few scenarios which are related to our major goals and recruit real users to perform those tasks to assess our redesign. We also plan to use two questionnaires before and after the testing is conducted to collect more data for this study. These valuable findings will be used to evaluate our redesign and improve our design.

Schedule for Redesign Process

Tasks	Duration	Dates	Owner	Status
1.Proposal Data collection, Tasks and responsibilities assignment	2 days	10/5-10/7	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	completed
1.1 Introduction Writing	1 day	10/7-10/8	Jake	completed
1.2 SugarSync system analysis and competitor research	3 days	10/5-10/8	Christina, Mike	completed
1.3 Identification & justification of 3 user requirement research activities	3 days	10/6-10/9	Shubha, Ruby	completed
1.4 High level HCDE proposal scheduling	1 day	10/9-10/10	Christina	completed
1.5 Finalize proposal& editing	2 days	10/9-10/11	Mike, Jake	completed
1.6 Milestone (Proposal Delivery)	< day	10/12-10/12	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	completed
2. Research Activities Reports	28 days	10/12-11/9	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	in progress
2.1 Competitor Analysis and User Survey	7 days	10/12-10/19	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	in progress
2.1.1 Data collection and analysis	3 days	10/20-10/23	Christina,Shubha, Ruby	not started
2.1.2 Finalize research report & editing	2 days	10/23-10/25	Mike, Jake	not started
2.1.3 Milestone (Research Activity Report 1 delivery)	< day	10/26-10/26	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
2.2 Contextual Inquiry	10 days	10/20-10/30	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
2.2.1 Data collection and analysis	8 days	10/21-10/29	Mike, Jake, Shubha	not started
2.2.2 Finalize research report & editing	2 days	10/30-11/1	Ruby, Christina	not started
2.2.3 Milestone (Research Activity Report 2 delivery)	< day	11/2-11/2	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
2.3 Prototyping & Usability Testing	8 days	11/1-11/9	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
2.3.1 Create redesigned prototype	2 days	11/1-11/2	Mike, Christina,Shubha	not started
2.3.2 Perform Usability Testing to users	2 days	11/2-11/4	Ruby,Jake	not started
2.3.3 Data collection and analysis	3 days	11/4-11/7	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
2.3.4 Finalize research report & editing	1 day	11/7-11/8	Shubha,Jake	not started
2.2.3 Milestone (Research Activity Report 3 delivery)	< day	11/9-11/9	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
3. Redesign recommendation	26 days	11/9-12/7	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
3.1 Redesign recommendation Report I (draft version)	12 days	11/9-11/23	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
3.1.1 Gather and analyse data from activity report 1,2,3	6 days	11/9-11/15	Ruby, Shubha, Jake	not started
3.1.2 Redesign system prototype (draft version)	4 days	11/16-11/20	Mike, Christina,Shubha	not started
3.1.3 Finalize report & editing (draft version)	2 days	11/20-11/22	Jake, Mike	not started
3.1.4 Milestone (Research Redesign Report-draft version)	< day	11/23-11/23	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
3.2 Redesign Recommentation Report II (final version)	14 days	11/23-12/7	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started
3.2.1 Gather and analyse data from activity report 1,2,3	4 days	11/23-11/27	Shubha, Christina, Jake	not started
3.2.2 Redesign system prototype (final version)	5 days	11/27-12/2	Mike, Ruby, Jake	not started
3.2.3 Finalize report & editing (final version)	2 days	12/2-12/4	Christina, Ruby	not started
3.2.4 Presentation preparation (data collection, slides, rehearsal)	2 days	12/4-12/6	Jake, Subha, Mike	not started
3.2.5 Milestone (Research Redesign Report-final version) + Presentation	< day	12/7-12/7	Shubha, Ruby, Christina, Jake, Mike	not started