Template Asset Uploading Process Redesign
Templates has always been one of the most used collage types in PicCollage, but the creation and uploading of templates used to be complicated, troublesome and a huge hassle . Therefore, along with our design engineer, we decided to completely redesign the workflow of template uploading, to support the scaling of template production.
Before the redesign, template creation requires designing on laptop, exporting the assets onto an iPhone with the PicCollage beta app, recreating the template within the app, and then uploading to the server. This caused a lot of issues, including:
- Original template design files scattered in different devices
- A lot of back and forth on multiple devices for one template operation
- Not being able to layout the elements as precisely as when created with laptop
- With the trivial steps, the creation is prone to human error
Designing the flow
We figured that the biggest pain point was the part where the templates had to be created on the phone, which is not a design tool to begin with. So the best solution is to completely scratch the part of designing on the phone, and build a platform or feature that allows in house designers to design and execute the template designs completely on their laptop. We later on settled on using Figma as the main software that can support design, documentation, and execution.
Reasons of choosing Figma:
- With Figma being a collaborative design tool, multiple designers can share the same design file and compile templates created within the same time range together
- Figma plugins are relatively easier to develop compared to building a completely new tool or service ourselves
- Figma supports layout and design features that are more than enough for designers to create a great template layout
Impact
Here’s a comparison of the operations before and after the redesign. With the template workflow redesign we were able to hugely increase the efficiency of template creation, and provide more templates for our users more instantly, and have the templates a lot less buggy than before.
Moreover, this also pushed the evolvement of the template creation of our team, enabling more possibilities for template related feature developments. There had been numerous evolutional updates for PicCollage template since the workflow update, and this operation flow has proven to be scalable and able to support our Product to grow and improve.