While in the process of creating my UX portfolio, I knew that a tool that would allow me to visually demonstrate my development would make my portfolio easier for the reviewer to digest.
So I scoured the web for free and paid tools for what seemed like a few weeks, testing cumbersome, poorly designed programs that I couldn’t crack or just didn’t work perfectly with PowerPoint.
After weeding through the bad apples, I found a gem called “SMAPLY”. It was just what I was looking for. In the past, you had used various programs where a free trial was offered instead of your credit card information having to be exchanged first. Well, according to marketing guru Jay Abraham, if a company has a really good product or service, they should stick to what he refers to as investing risk, where they initially put the risk on themselves rather than on the customer. In SMAPLY’s case, their venture investment is to let anyone interested in trying the program first without giving up its 16 digits for two weeks.
This great UX practice earned a lot of interesting points for me. Second, the information architecture is very easy to understand and the free trial is incorporated into the value proposition. Also, once you choose the free trial, you will be given the option to watch some short educational videos showing you how to use the interface and best practices to create your travel and people maps.
After watching 2 or 3 videos, I went straight to the dashboard and started working on my main persona’s travel map. The interface was not difficult to learn and I was done in about 20 minutes. Once this was done, I was given the option to export my project to PDF, which PowerPoint allowed. Just below the export button is an information box explaining that SMAPLY is currently working on other export options and user feedback on how to implement is welcome. Needless to say, I was impressed by this usability heuristic practice.
However, the SAS was not without its flaws, albeit moderate. When you export a project, you still have the sample project labeled “copy” at the top next to your saved project. I thought it looked a bit tacky, but this slight monstrosity didn’t spoil my overall user experience.
With SMAPLY, I was able to achieve my goal of creating a user and person journey map in a relatively short time without major problems. The user interface was also well designed and aesthetically pleasing. Ironically, I was the SAS product person and I can attest to their great user experience.