Canva
So many files, so little time. Making digital asset management easier in Canva.
Project Overview
I have a hunch that seasoned Canva users (daily/weekly usage for 2+ years) struggle with sorting and managing all of the design files and brand assets on their current dashboard.
A seasoned user would typically have a sizable collection of designs from designs that they're currently working on to draft and archived designs. All of these designs currently sit within the user's "All your designs" dashboard.
Key frustrations:
Users will need to keep scrolling to locate older files
Users searching for their files will be directed first to Canva's templates, creating confusion
Organisation of files sits within the "All your folders" tab which is slightly obscure
Files that have been filed into folders would still appear within the "All your designs" dashboard
Details
Role: UX Designer
Client: Canva
Tools: Figma, Coolors.co, Canva, Miro
Objectives and Goals
To affirm my hunch, a mix of desk research, and qualitative research such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing was used.
The goal is to create an improved custom dashboard that allows users to easily search, organize, and manage their design files and brand assets. This would save time, enabling users to dive straight into creating and designing.
The Task
Creating an improved custom dashboard that allows Canva users to easily search, organize, and manage their design files and brand assets.
User Persona
Desk Research
From my desk research via GetApp (a resource for businesses exploring software as a service (SaaS) products) - reviews show an overwhelming love for Canva's functions and 97% would recommend the platform.
There were however many reviews from seasoned Canva users (daily usage for 2+ years) that commented that it's not intuitive/easy to keep things organized and Canva needed to have a better file management system.
Landscape Review
In addition to the desk research, I've researched Canva's competitors shown here in this Landscape review. Amongst all of its competitors, Adobe Sparks, Easil, Vistacreate and Lucidpress were most similar to Canva in terms of quality of templates, ease of use and features.
Canva is clearly the winner in terms of likability, popularity, features and quality of templates. However, it has one of the most cluttered homepage layouts and a clunky folder management system in comparison to its lesser-known counterparts. This is in part due to Canva heavy push to get users to discover all of its ever-growing list of features.
User Research
Interviews were conducted with four Canva users - working professionals from different industries and backgrounds.
All of the users have different levels of experience with Canva (daily/ weekly usage and years) and all of them use Canva for both personal and work.
The interviews were conducted over Zoom and consisted of the below:
Q&A survey and interview questions regarding their usage of Canva, how satisfied they were with Canva, their experience with managing their design files on Canva, and more.
Usability testing: Users were required to complete two tasks on Canva. Task #1 involved searching for a file and filing it into a newly created folder. Task #2 involved editing a file and saving the file into an existing folder.
Post-Questions: Users were asked to describe their feelings about completing the two tasks on Canva.
Insights
From the survey and user interview sessions, Canva rated high on the user satisfaction score and users noted that they use Canva because it's less complicated than other alternatives, it's free to use for basic needs, it has a lot of professional templates, it gives inspiration to non-designers and it is the best beginners platform for designing.
Out of 4 users, 3 users mentioned that they log into Canva with a clear goal/ purpose in mind and they want to either pick up where they left off with their last design or create a new design. The discovery phase comes after they've opened their design or created a new design - through the "Templates" or "Elements" tabs.
From the user interview sessions, only one out of four users found the file organisation and design filing to be useful and a must-have. This user works with a team of volunteers and she found that it is important to file her designs according to projects so that other team members that are new to Canva could easily locate the files and work off them quickly.
Users would scroll through at length to locate the multiple designs on their dashboard without organising them even when there are several ways to create folders and move their designs to the relevant folders on the platform.
All of the users had difficulty completing both tasks and 2 out of 4 were unable to complete task #1 (searching for a file and filing it into a newly created folder).
They were happy to discover the various ways they could organise their files, however, after completing Task #1 and #2, we've discovered that the files still appear in their unorganised form on the dashboard. The user has to locate the My Folder tab to view all their folders. This seems like a counter-intuitive exercise in the end. The users ended up feeling frustrated and confused and frustrated.
Recommendations
Reorganisation of the current dashboard to create a focus on the user's intentions rather than Canva's constant push to get their features out to users. The dashboard should look cleaner with a clear differentiation for users that want to work on their recent designs/ create new designs and users that want to discover new templates/ functions.
Re-directing the current home page - "Recommended for you" to a "My Designs" or "My Projects" page that has all of the users' designs and folders on one page so that users can immediately see all their recent designs and project folders. This would eliminate the need for a "My Folders" tab, making the dashboard cleaner.
Creating a clearly visible drop-down function on the users' uncategorised design file that enables the user to easily rename, tag, move to folder, share, make a copy or archive their design. Creating a tagging function would also create a better filing system, making it easier for the user to search for their design after it is being filed.
Ideation
During the ideation process, I've created a storyboard of the user's attempt at locating design files on Canva as well as a draft user flow that will attempt to resolve the users struggle with sorting and managing the design files.
The draft user flow also ties in the information from insights and recommendations.
Concept Design
This low fidelity paper prototype was designed to help address the users' struggle with sorting and managing all of the design files. The user flow is broken down into four user flows - Search, Sort, File and Save.
The different possible user flows were guided by the suggestions and pain points from the user interviews, desk research and a study on Canva's competing platforms listed in the landscape review.
Low Fidelity Frames
The paper prototype is followed by the low fidelity prototype.
This was tested with two users and was slightly altered to lessen the amount of interaction needed to complete an action.
Usability Testing and Iteration
The low fidelity prototype was tested with three Canva users via Zoom. Users were tasked with activities that brought them through the user flows of Search, File, Sort and Save.
Overall, all users completed the activities and found it relatively easy to navigate.
There were slight hesitations in locating the create a new folder button, some confusion with the Save function in the create a design page and the inability to drag and drop a design tile into a folder created some frustration with two users.
Recommendations
After the usability testing, the following findings/recommendations were incorporated to the mid-fidelity prototype :
There was some slight hesitation in finding the create a new folder button. A coloured button with Create a new folder will need to replace the current ‘+ New folder’.
Based on the users’ interaction and comments from activity 3, The Drag and Drop feature will need to be brought forward for development in order to ease the users’ filing capabilities. The feature was initially slotted for later development as it was categorised in the High Impact / High Effort quadrant of the Effort vs Impact priority matrix.
There was some confusion during Activity 4 when prompted to Save the design into an existing folder. Some users clicked on the ellipsis instead of the Save button in an attempt to locate the Save to folder interaction. The Save button will need to be changed to “Save to Folder”.
Mid Fidelity Frames
A mid-fidelity clickable prototype was created based on the recommendations from the previous usability testing, depicting the users' journey of searching and organising their design files.
Next Steps / Future Development
Usability testing is required in order to test the effectiveness of the implemented changes and added features. The test should be conducted with a group of seasoned and new users of Canva.
A report of the findings would be presented to internal and external stakeholders and developers for further feedback and improvements.
A workshop and usability testing would be needed to determine the desirability, feasibility, and viability of the next features slotted in for development in the Effort vs Impact Prioritisation Matrix such as the 'sorting function' and 'adding a tag'.
Explore the other opportunities that were synthesised from the User Research session such as the tutorial/ education of new features aspect. This could be developed as a new features banner in the homepage/ dashboard.
