CrownEffect is an iOS app that allows users, using custom built AI models, to upload an image and within seconds have optimal, human quality hashtags and captions to choose from.

The concept for CrownEffect was to automate the process of creating captions and hashtags for novice influencers and brands within travel, fashion, food, fitness and beauty industry. Through our initial research, we found they had two main pain points: trying to come up with clever captions and knowing which hashtags would provide the most value for their social media posts.

For hashtags, we needed to take into consideration the appropriate audience size and specificity to reach potential followers. For captions, we needed accurate feature recognition in images to get results that were thoughtful and clever.

We began building some early AI models which we tested and trained rigorously with many people. Within a few months, we were able to get remarkable results: hashtags that were spot on and captions that went beyond simple feature listing.

Looking at the competitive landscape at the time of our research, there were an overwhelming number of hashtag generating apps and a handful of caption apps on the app store. With these apps, the user had to search hashtags and captions by category, meaning the results were not specific to their image.

For AI powered apps we found only one that scanned your image to produce a caption, however; the results were often inaccurate.

App reviews provided us with valuable feedback about what features their users liked, their pain points and what they were willing to pay. All considerations for how we would build and monetize our app.

We simplified the process to the following steps:

1. Upload a new photo
2. Choose from three AI generated captions
3. Select from ~30 AI generated hashtags
4. Review caption and hashtags
5. Post to social media

The flow of the initial wireframes was slightly different to the final designs. We ended up removing a step to select a category which proved to be redundant after testing.

The ultimate end goal of our users was to gain influence and followers for their personal brand or business. With this in mind, and given the name of the app, we decided on a crown for the logo. It went through many variations before we settled on the final design.

The colour purple was chosen as the pop of colour as it is associated with royalty, wealth and wisdom. It also ranks well with female audiences which we knew would be our primary users.

Playfair Display was chosen for the headers and balanced with the sans serif body font, Source Sans Pro. The modern serif typeface for the headers was a nod to the newspaper and magazine industries for which social media networks are now provide an alternative to.

CrownEffect (an iOS app) was built using React Native and deployed through the App Store. Development of the app was highly iterative and involved frequent user testing. Before launch, we tested frequently with potential users (using Test Flight) to see where we could make improvements. We went through three builds before our final release.

From testing, we found that users wanted more customizations with the caption and hashtag options that were presented to them. We tweaked the design, allowing for more them to edit the captions and hashtags, or add their own altogether. We were also able to determine that our target audience wanted the ability to login via Instagram, which we added to our sign up and login flow. Finally, we adjusted our sharing flow to eliminate any confusion and concerns that the captions and hashtags would be posted to social media without the user being able to review it first.

We gradually began gaining users after launching the app in April 2019, with a ~1% rate of users upgrading to premium. This growth continued without any paid promotion over the next few months, peaking at just over 1000 users. Despite this modest growth, we were still unable to cover server costs and realized we would need to pivot into something more profitable.

We explored many promising avenues which involved integrating the share workflow much more closely with social networks at scale. Unfortunately, most social networks (particularly Facebook and Instagram) have closed API’s which they do not accept applications for. This meant that to pivot successfully, we would have needed to move further away from social media. At this point, we decided to close the project.

Although CrownEffect was ultimately unsuccessful, we did not consider the new skills and knowledge we developed while working together as a loss. Between the three of us, we were able to build and launch a fully functional AI app in just half a year.