Sift Ninja
PROJECT NAME: Sift Ninja
EMPLOYER: Two Hat Security
ROLE: UX/UI Designer
DESIGNED WITH: Jesse Korzan, UX/UI Designer
DATE: 2017
LINK: Sift Ninja
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Sift Ninja is an app built for Two Hat Security that integrates with chat, comments, gaming, and other social applications. It can analyze and filter text based on certain risk levels and then auto-moderate, hash out profane words, or mark as NSFW. Sift Ninja is customizable as well.
OBJECTIVES
The goal was to build a simplified version of the complex and feature rich Community Sift enterprise product in order to reach more clients. It would use the same filtering expertise with fewer features while sporting an all-new interface.
GETTING TO KNOW THE USERS
From the very inception of the idea we had several real users from companies in the field ready to test our product and give us feedback, even in the early days of ideation. This proved to be very valuable while building and designing the Sift Ninja app.
ITERATING ON IDEAS
Initial wireframes were low fidelity, done with markers and paper in order to quickly iterate through ideas. Later, as ideas were cultivated, high fidelity wireframes were created.
REFINING THE IDEAS
Prototypes were built to test the usability of the Sift Ninja app. Feedback was gathered from our real users as well as using usertesting.com.
The user interface is comprised of three primary design patterns. This informs the design of each template and keeps a consistent feel for the user as they navigate throughout the app.
CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS
Taking a complex enterprise product and squishing it down to a simplified consumer tool had its challenges. We reduced the enterprise risk rating levels from seven to three. This meant creating new terminology that made sense and still aligned with the enterprise systems.
It was tricky finding ways to display actions showing the increased reduction of negative content as a good thing. You want the user to feel good about the bad language being removed from their business platform but not show the bad language itself as a positive visual element.
DELIVERY
Sift Ninja was a fast-paced build going from concept to functioning product in less than six months.
RESULTS
Clients have found that using Sift Ninja is far more effective and time efficient than building their own blacklist/whitelist/RegEx system. The simplicity of the app allows them to get trusted results that improve the sentiment of their community. It also allows them to dedicate more time to other business matters providing a significant ROI.
Sift Ninja was a featured product on Product Hunt in 2016 shortly after launch.
“a phenomenal first time experience walking through it…an easy developer experience.”
- Stephen Blum, CTO of PubNub
“Mike definitely helped the team understand all the moving parts integrating the tech, the team, the users, the language terms and the problem space, etc.
"Being part of a small self-managed group to quickly design, build, and market a complete SaaS product was no small feat, especially considering that Google, Twitter, Twitch, and others all struggled with a similar problem.
"The fact that the end result was fun, positive and well-received shows good character and empathy for people, not only the end users but for the team and stakeholders as well.”
- Jesse Korzan, UX designer, Sift Ninja team member