Recollo Logo

Media collages for schools and groups

Client

Recollo (Independent)

Services

UX & UI Design

Year

2022

Platform

iOS & Android

Memories worth
sharing properly.

Recollo was born from a simple idea: what if sharing a collection of photos and videos felt as considered and beautiful as the memories themselves? The founders envisioned a mobile app where users could design dynamic media collages — pulling in personal photos, videos and text — and share them instantly via QR code. Post-COVID, QR codes had finally reached mass adoption. The timing felt right.

The brief covered everything: brand, UI kit, personas, user flows and a full set of high-fidelity prototypes — all within a tight budget, and designed to be easily scalable as the product grew. The collage templates needed to feel premium enough to be worth purchasing, and the experience needed to be simple enough that anyone from a primary school teacher to a grandparent could use it without a second thought.

Phase 01 — Discovery

Scoping what's possible
within what's real.

With a lean budget and a founder team full of enthusiasm, the discovery phase was about translating ambition into a disciplined MVP. Requirements were gathered, ranked and phased — separating the must-haves from the nice-to-haves so that the first version of the product could be built and launched without scope creep killing it before it started.

Digital storage and bandwidth costs were factored into the requirements from the outset — keeping the product financially viable as the number of collages and users grew over time.

MoSCoW Prioritisation

recollo-moscow.fig
Recollo MoSCoW prioritisation

Feature requirements phased across MVP and future releases — balancing user needs against budget and infrastructure constraints from day one.

Phase 02 — Personas

Same app.
Three very different reasons to use it.

Three distinct personas were identified — each using the application for different reasons and expecting a slightly different experience when they log in. Interface and functionality adapt based on account type, ensuring that a corporate user's workflow doesn't look like a parent putting together a birthday collage.

Persona 01 — General User
SM

Sarah Mitchell

Parent / Teacher

Female · 38 · Everyday user

Who She Is

A busy parent or teacher who wants to create something personal and memorable — an end-of-year class collage, a birthday tribute, a holiday keepsake — without needing design skills or hours of spare time.

Goals

  • Create something beautiful quickly and easily
  • Share it with family, friends or a class group
  • Have it feel genuinely personal, not generic

Frustrations

  • Existing tools are either too complicated or too basic
  • Sharing large video files is always a headache
  • Printed photo books take weeks and cost a fortune

Why Recollo

A template does the design work. A QR code handles the sharing. She just adds the memories.

Tech Skills

Intermediate
Persona 02 — Corporate User
MW

Marcus Webb

Marketing / HR Manager

Male · 44 · B2B account

Who He Is

A corporate user leveraging Recollo for internal communications, employee recognition or branded marketing collateral — creating media-rich collages that can be shared across teams or embedded in campaigns.

Goals

  • Create on-brand content at scale without a design team
  • Recognise employee milestones or team achievements
  • Distribute engaging content via QR code in physical spaces

Frustrations

  • Generic tools produce generic output
  • Video-heavy content is hard to share internally at scale
  • Needs brand consistency without requiring design sign-off every time

Why Recollo

Branded templates, bulk creation capability and QR distribution make it a practical internal comms and marketing tool.

Tech Skills

Savvy
Persona 03 — Advertiser
PN

Priya Nair

Brand / Advertising Manager

Female · 32 · Agency or in-house

Who She Is

An advertiser or brand manager who sees Recollo as a creative medium — embedding QR codes in physical or digital advertising that drives audiences to rich, immersive media experiences rather than a standard landing page.

Goals

  • Create memorable brand touchpoints that go beyond static ads
  • Drive engagement through interactive media collages
  • Track QR scan activity and audience interaction

Frustrations

  • QR codes typically just link to a boring webpage
  • Rich media campaigns need developer resources to build
  • No off-the-shelf tool bridges physical ads and video content elegantly

Why Recollo

The collage becomes the campaign. Scan → experience → convert. No developer required.

Tech Skills

Savvy
recollo-ui-kit.fig
Recollo UI Kit in Figma
The UI Kit

Dark. Rounded.
Built to showcase content.

The branding and visual language were designed entirely from scratch. A dark-mode-first skin was chosen deliberately — the application's primary purpose is to display rich photo and video content, and nothing makes imagery pop like a dark background. Rounded typography echoes the softness of the Recollo logo and gives the interface a warm, approachable feel that matches the product's emotional purpose.

Iconography and components were designed to complement the theme without competing with the collages themselves. The UI exists to get out of the way.

Colour Tokens Typography Scale Component Library Iconography Dark Mode Figma
Phase 05 — High-Fidelity Prototypes

50+ screens.
Nothing left to guess.

Over 50 screens were designed and wired into fully interactive Figma prototypes — covering all three personas, the full collage creation and purchase flow, empty states and error handling. The prototype was built to be handed directly to developers with no ambiguity, and to be demo-ready for the client's own conversations with potential backers.

recollo-prototype-overview.fig
All Recollo screens in Figma

All 50+ screens across three personas — from onboarding and template selection through to collage editing, QR generation, checkout and sharing.

Final Outcome

Scalable from day one.
Beautiful from the start.

The MVP prototype was designed to grow as the business grew — templates can expand, pricing models can evolve and new personas can be onboarded without rebuilding from scratch. The application keeps users inside the product from browse to checkout to share, with no external detours.

Recollo app screen 1 Recollo app screen 2 Recollo app screen 3 Recollo app screen 4
Recollo app screen 5 Recollo app screen 6 Recollo app screen 7 Recollo app screen 8
Thank you for being able to decipher what we are trying to do. We are really impressed with how it looks. Thank you for all your hard work.
BD

Bronwyn Duncan

Founder & CEO, Recollo