Snippy

Inspiration

A few weeks ago, the three of us went on our final Spring Break trip to Cancun as seniors in university. Living in different states around the country, we cherished every moment spent together. To document physical mementos, we decided to try scrapbooking and junk journaling our trip and came home with personalized keepsakes we will treasure forever. After reminiscing over our creations together, we observed that we all had some pain points in common:

It was hard to organize our mementos throughout a travel day, and we had difficulty remembering which mementos went with which activity
Each of us had our own individual journals, and there was no way for us to share mementos amongst each other
A physical copy of a scrapbook can be easily damaged or lost, especially during hectic vacation trips

From this, we created Snippy, an app that allows friends and travel companions collaborate on the scrapbooking/junk-journaling experience. Snippy digitizes scrapbooking, allowing for easy collaboration and access. Everyone can contribute in their own way, from capturing candid moments, jotting down inside jokes, or adding a song that captures the essence of the trip. This app is more than a tool to recollect, it is also a way for us to relive our best moments together, even if we’re far apart.

What it does

Feature 1: Create trips

Effortlessly plan trips, invite groupmates, and start documenting your shared travel experience.

System Architecture

Feature 2: Add mementos

A lockscreen widget allows users to directly open their phone’s camera or recorder and add mementos to their trip in real-time. Or upload mementos later, so you can stay present in the moment.

System Architecture

Feature 3: Collaboratively compile mementos in a shared digital scrapbook

Pages for each place and date auto-populate with the mementos uploaded. All trip members can collaboratively decorate and create a shared scrapbook that captures the spirit of their trip.

System Architecture

How we built it

Brainstorming

We started by creating a list of any and all ideas we had and narrowed them down through multivoting in FigJam. Once we decided to focus on the idea of digitizing the tangible scrapbooking experience, we used the same process to narrow down which features we wanted to build out. From there we created a user flow to figure out how the features would connect with each other. System Architecture

Lofi sketches and wireframes

We designed low fidelity wireframes of the most important key screens first. We then expanded the flows of the key screens based on what we needed to show the key functionality of the app. System Architecture

Building the flows

Since our app has 3 main features/flows, we divided tasks so that each of us worked on building 1 flow during the hackathon. To standardize our design we created a UI library of text styles, color styles, and custom components. We created our interactive prototype using Figma. We also utilized Google Material Library for icons, FigJam for sticker assets, and iOS 16 Figma UI Kit for iOS integrated components.

Challenges we ran into

Time management was our biggest challenge when designing this project. With the theme being so broad, it was difficult to narrow the scope of possibilities. We spent nearly three hours agreeing on the idea and defining the end goal. The time crunch created an added pressure that sometimes left us feeling indecisive about which direction we were going to go in, or even what to call our product. From our messy ideation stage, we learned how to quickly prioritize, communicate, and collaborate more effectively, and move forward with confidence.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In 24 hours we were able to build a high-fidelity prototype with a robust UI library and advanced interactions. Since we used our real vacation photos in our prototypes, we also had a great time reliving our memories.

What we learned

Alignment is key to collaboration. In the early hours of the hackathon, our team had very different ideas for the app’s features and target audience. By using visualization tools and structured voting frameworks, we were able to synthesize our ideas fast and arrive at a shared idea that felt inclusive and intentional.

Determine the mission statement early on and stick to it. In the beginning, we had several feature ideas that had potential but did not have time to build all of them. To narrow them down fast, we created our mission statement before wireframing and only focused on ideas that add value to the mission.

Stay on the grind! In 24 hours we had to learn fast, build faster, and not let our momentum slip.

What's next for Snippy

Even though this product was built in 24 hours, we love our idea and want to continue building it out and expanding the features. For example, we envision that a future iteration of this app can have more social features and a print-to-order service. We see potential in our design and its ability to connect people and by continuing the development of Snippy, we hope to build something that fosters creativity, shared experiences, and storytelling, from a fun and intuitive interface.