Clip It! - an iPhone Web Application

Graduate Project / Stanford, CA / Fall 2010

This Human Computer Interaction class project was designed to aid mobile users in sharing articles, videos, or other links with friends and families who are interested in the content while on-the-go. Prior to the iPhone's iOS 4 update, sharing links on the phone was difficult and troublesome; users had to copy and paste URL links from the Safari browser to their e-mail apps. Moreover, users often had to take time to think about which of their recipients would want to receive each particular link. Clip It! was developed to fill these particular needs.

When a user is on a particular webpage that he would like to share, he can simple select the Clip It! bookmarklet and share the link easily without leaving the mobile Safari browser. In addition, Clip It! recognizes users' interests, so it suggests to users which of the users' friends would be happy to receive a unique link. The mobile web app allows users to easily and quickly share meaningful content with the people who care. (Created in collaboration with Jisas Lemasagarai, Dillon McCoy & Shuqiao Song ).

One-minute video demo:

One-Minute Presentation:

design process

empathize. define. ideate.

My role in the project involved needfinding through observations and interviews, designing the user experience and interface, rapid prototyping, conducting heuristic evaluations and user tests, iterating the design, and creating the final presentation. The project began as a simple idea to make sharing more convenient and instant, but we soon learned from our users that despite all of the channels with which a user can publicly blast all the interesting content he finds online, one to one (or one to few) sharing experiences continue to be prevalent and meaningful. Therefore, how might we design a webapp that streamlines and focuses the process of meaningful sharing and receiving of media online from one to one (or one to a few)?

prototype. test. iterate.

Clip It! was simply a proof-of-concept that users welcomed enthusiastically. After our project presentation, we learned that the iOs 4 update included the feature to share a link from the Safari browser (users' previous copy-and-pasting behavior was eliminated) - this demonstrated to us that one of Clip It's goals to streamline the sharing experience from mobile browsers was indeed a need that mobile users desired. Furthermore, our user test participants were excited about the web app's main feature of friend suggestions when it came to sharing online content because individualized sharing is a demonstration of care and attention between friends and loved ones - something that massive sharing via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter often lacked.