Robby Torres / Product DesignerShots App
Shots Mobile, Inc. (now 'Shots Studios') is a creative company whose flagship product is Shots mobile app - a social media platform. It's value of selfies and no comments made it popular among teens and millennials.
From 2015 - 2016, the Shots App had over 6 million monthly active users all over the world. It attracted the attention of Twitter who offered to acquire the company.
Role:
Lead Product Designer
Chief Product Officer:
Sam S
Engineering:
Dathan P
Tools:
Sketch, Flinto for Mac
Me (left-most with the black striped shirt) with the rest of the Shots team in early 2015 with our primary investor, Justin Bieber.
The Problem
The founders who are close friends with some high profile celebrities sought to address the bullying that's rampant across social media networks. They experienced the tremendous bashing and negative comments throughout that affect people's mental health and behavior.
Hypothesis
We believe that by removing comments from the social platform and focusing on people's photos and videos will make a fun and safe environment for millennials to express themselves better. We know this to be true when we see an increase in our user base.
Version 3
I started at Shots Mobile when they just released version 3. I worked on a few optimizations and enhancements until version 4.
A simple feed with full width content, accessible action buttons and a floating tab bar.
A powerful camera with accessible settings ready to take a shot.
An amazing Preview mode to tweak your shot before posting for the world to see.
A direct messaging mode to talk privately with a friend or follower.
Version 4
A couple of sweet ideas like a radar feature to see other people who have Shots within a 1 mile radius were tried. Another was how to show multiple posts from a single user like this "Album" concept we thought about.
Radar feature in high fidelity
The album feed that we ended up calling "Journals"
New Video Mode
With most of our influencers coming from Vine, the major request was for Shots to have video. We introduced 3-second video shots in this version.
Connect
Our users needed a way to discover new content and find other people. We consolidated these in one area called 'Connect'.
Doodle
Another feedback we received was letting our users "doodle" on their photos. This was an initial concept that we did not pursue.
More Ideations
Another version of the 'Friends' section with a custom graphic of San Francisco by me
We tried this tiled version of the 'Discover' section as well that shows the latest posts of different influencers
The inside view of the Journal feature
RESULTS
The 'Journals' weren't well received at all and we received a lot of negative feedback from both users and influencers. The extra step to see the full image proved to be ineffective.
Version 4.X
After the failed experiment, we quickly reverted back to the full width feed. The behavior of simply scrolling through the screen put our metrics back to its former benchmark.
We also saw demand for longer video posts.
Back to full width posts
Full minute videos
Even the Profile section have full width shots
4.3.2
A major release, we experimented on different versions and decided to go with a "clean" feel after numerous tests.
This version is another major release for the app. The colors are stripped from the different elements like tab bars and navbars and used a single blue color across the app.
Another new feature is the direct chat where you can chat about a photo with that your friend posted.
This version also saw our first release using Android's Material Design.
Ideations
Stripped nav and tab bars gives focus on the content
New filters for both photos and videos
Direct Shots enable you to send a direct message with the content attached
Direct Shot sent
First Android Material Design Version
We kept the colors in the nav bar for Android
We also kept the bottom bar in place of the Floating Action Button
Version 5.X
This was the last few major releases of the app that I worked on before we transitioned into an entertainment studio.
This major release enabled our users to share links aside from photos and videos. Other users can react to them with emojis. We also added sticker packs in the camera to add more fun to the content.
Sticking to the fun factor in social media, we experimented in adding a "Funny" section to rank the most popular and trending posts and links in our platform.
The new camera mode with sticker packs
The new Home with link sharing and Emoji reactions
Ideations
A full blown chat with media sharing (links, photos, videos) was available in this version
Attachment sent
Easier to share your posts with your friends
More fun aesthetic with some custom robot characters made by me
The "Funny" section, ranked accordingly and updated every hour
Emoji reactions that's updated according to what's most popularly used
End of product
This was the time when Snapchat became extremely popular and was widely adopted by our base users. Instagram was also innovating this time to capture Snapchat's users. These 2 giants made it hard for us to compete in the same space. Since we had influencers like Rudy Mancuso and Lele Pons onboard to produce content for us, the founders decided to end the product and shift towards creating and producing original content with our partner creators.
Shots has now fully transitioned into a media company.
