Project

UX Design /
Ancestry

Responsibilities

Concept proposal & strategy, UX & UI design, project management, demo presentation

―

Ancestry.com is the world’s largest online family history service. Subscribers have a fundamental desire to understand who they are, where they come from and are interested in discovering, preserving and sharing their family history.

After many home visits to our users, it became clear the product was difficult to share and collaborate with other family members. Many of our users still store their photos and clippings in the shoebox and don’t know what to do with them.

I proposed a project that reimagined how users preserve their family history and share with their family as part of 24hr hack day.

“I wish I can easily share these photos and clippings with my family.”

– Ancestry user

Process

Lead a team of 8 developers and managed the project from idea generation to implementation

• Generated ideas with the team and sketched out rough design and workflow.

• Collected necessary family history data and content for the developers to use.

• Finalized the design and provided design assets for the prototype.

• Built a working prototype using open API data.

• Presented to the product department.

Outcome

The team designed and built ‘Family Wall’, where members can showcase their discovery and allow for other family members to collaborate and contribute.

The concept was well received by the product leadership and became a key theme for the product roadmap.

Key features included

• Ability to curate the mementoes with photos, stories, clippings, etc.

• Options to display auto generated content based on the key world events.

• Social features such as ability to comment or simply ‘like’ the content for other family members to join in and participate in preserving a family history.