Product Designer
About
Zoho Show is a mobile / tablet / smart tv platform where users can create presentations. The product is majorly split across five modules - Create, Edit, Animate, Review, and Present. I spent a year initiating and crafting the UI/UX for Zoho Show iOS.
Zoho Show Web is a powerful and comprehensive platform. Bringing the same philosophy to mobile devices without a compromise was quite the challenge. Working with a lot of experienced and creative minds, we were able to launch a well-designed functional app for creating presentations with ease.
Research
With so many apps being downloaded, it’s no wonder that the average app has a churn rate of 57% in the first month (users who don’t open the app more than once during the first 30 days after downloading it) and a whopping 71% after 90 days.
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If any part of an app is undesirable, or slow to get the hang of, users will opt to install a new one rather than stick it out with the imperfect product. Nothing is wasted for the consumer when disposing of an app, other than possibly a few dollars (and they know they can download the app again at any time).
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Creating an app for mobile from an already existing web product was quite the challenge.
User Interview
The best part about being in Zoho is that everybody dog foods our inhouse tools, including Zoho Show. So I met a few people to get their perspective on bringing Zoho Show to mobile devices.
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90% of them did agree that it would be challenge for us to create a convincing app that would make people design presentations on the go, using just their mobiles.
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Many product heads wanted a way to present, access notes, highlight and mark slides during a presentation, using their mobile devices.
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This gave us the scope to also develop an Apple TV app for presenting slides.
89%
Want to create / jot down presentation ideas on the go.
82%
Wanted an app remote with notes to present content on a big screen.
76%
Wanted quality templates to make better presentations with fewer edits.
Wireframe
I presented the first version design to my team on 29th January 2016. iOS 9 was the latest at that time.
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I preferred landscape mode as default view for Zoho Show's editor. I retained the same philosophies that were used to build Zoho Show Web, which is, Create, Format, Animate, Review and Present.
Clicking on the FAB icon, creates shape, text, charts, and tables. Format, Animate, Review and Present form the right panel.
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Contextual menus played a vital role in keeping things minimal and this made us focus only the necessary elements.​
Iterate
Most of the discussions happens at an early stage while we dog food the app. This gives us more control over the flow of the UI.
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When a feature is finalized, it is released to the entire Zoho Corp. for more people to test the app. This brings in even more interesting suggestions and ideas.
From these suggestions, we got the idea to implement the design for portrait mode as well. 75% of the users felt that portrait mode was ideal to create presentations on mobile devices and landscape mode felt more natural to view presentations.
Deliver
The first version of Zoho Show was released in late 2017 and it received many good reviews.
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The app is now listed on the App Store with 20k+ installations with a rating of 4.5 stars.
Listing Page
From the listing page, users can create, import and even connect to Apple TV. Notifications are also shown here.
Editor / Format
The right panel is contextual and has all actions required to edit a presentation.
Animate
All basic animations are available upfront. Complex path animations can be defined and customised according to the user's creativity.
Collaborate
Users can work on the same document with live collaboration features.
Present
Users can present their slides on Apple TV. While presenting, users can read notes, see upcoming slides, highlight sections, blackout screens, and see a timer on their iOS device and Apple Watch.
AmritaVarshini Ramabadran
This is one of the app which stayed for a long time in my phone. This is user friendly and I have also recommended it to my friends. This app is very helpful to school students.
Aditi Singh
Its great for making ppt's. I thought it would be hard for me making ppt on phone but through this app its very easy and simple 🤗
Yuvaraj M
I am using the free version on my mobile to create some normal presentation. But still I am able to do create some high level presentations through this mobile version. So far, I am happy with the options provided by Zoho show.