2025
Project: An App that Acts as a Second Brain
Timeline: 6 week class project, greyscale wireframes
Role: UX Researcher and Product Designer
Sorted is a one-stop searchable place for your physical and digital world.
Acting as a visual second brain, this app ensures you never lose a misplaced essential, buy a duplicate, or struggle to find a saved memory or document when you need it.
The Problem Space
Many people struggle to keep track of their physical belongings and digital items, which leads to misplaces essentials, forgotten memories, and unnecessary duplicate purchases. How might we create a way for users to easily externalize their memory, organize items, and rediscover items?
Hypothesis
By providing a visual second brain to capture and tag belongings, we can reduce the cognitive load and stress for users who struggle to track their items. Success will be measured by user reliance on the app during critical transition periods, such as relocating or inventorying meaningful keepsakes.
Goal 1:
Maximize user productivity by streamlining the filtering and search features to reduce the time taken for the user to find the item.
Goal 2:
Reduce unnecessary consumer spending by implementing an inventory verification system that prevents duplicate purchases.
Goal 3:
Implement a fast “Add-Item” flow that allows users to inventory new items within 15 seconds of app-open.
Interview Insights
I interviewed three participants regarding their routines and pain points, specifically looking to learn about their use of apps to stay organized. All participants were within the ages of 20-50 years old and all had unique living situations.
Interview Structure & Sample Questions:
- Understanding Daily Habits
- “Can you tell me a little bit about your day-to-day and your living situation?”
- Establishing a Need
- “How often do you find yourself unable to find an item? How often do you end up purchasing a duplicate of said item?”
Contextual Inquiry & Sample Questions:
- Evaluating Comfort with Technology
- “Would you feel comfortable using an app to catalog your items?”
- Current Process Walkthrough
- “What are ways you currently keep track of items? How effective are these ways?”
Findings:
After interviewing 3 participants we learned…
Proto-Persona
Based on my interview findings, I created a proto-persona.
Exploratory Sketches
Early solution sketches were used to rapidly explore ways to make each screen as intuitive as possible, allowing me to focus on core functionality rather than visuals.
User Testing
Five users were recruited for one round of user testing of my low-fidelity mockup, and helped me identify pain points I had not considered.
Design Prioritization Matrix
A design prioritization matrix was created to help me prioritize important changes recommended by the users.
Revised Mobile Prototype
The revised prototype reflects user feedback, purposeful iteration, and a more refined interaction that supports quick item capture, clear organization, and seamless navigation between different item types.
Figma Link
Clickable Prototype Link
I learned the importance of designing for real user needs rather than going off of assumptions. I also learned that creating consistent components can help make the prototyping process faster and add to a more cohesive look.
Clickable Prototype Link
Learnings:
- I discovered that while streamlining filtering options helps the organization, users need a balance of rigid structure and “free-form” capture to make the app feel like their-own.
- Improving and reducing the mental effort required to retrieve information weeks later greatly improves user-satisfaction.
Next Steps:
- Enhance the filtering system to automatically categorize incoming “brain dumps” based on historical user behaviour, reducing manual sorting time.
- Conduct additional rounds of usability testing focused on “retrieval success,” that measuring how quickly a user can find a specific item.
Sources
Verified Market Reports. “Home Inventory Apps Market Size, Market Insights, Growth & Forecast 2033.” Verified Market Reports, Nov. 2025. Accessed 1 Dec. 2025.
“Study Results: The Effect of Digital Photo Organizing on American Families.” EverPresent, n.d. Accessed 1 Dec. 2025.
“10 Ways to Use the Power of Photos for Dementia Care.” Alzheimer’s Texas, n.d. Accessed 1 Dec. 2025.
Lichter-Marck, Rose. “Point-and-Shoot Memory: How Does Photographing Things Affect Our Brains?” VICE, 7 Jan. 2014. Accessed 1 Dec. 2025.
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