Team
Lead Product Designer Collaborated with Stakeholder, Product Manager and Tech lead.
Project Overview
New social networking app where likeminded individuals connect on shared interests/ real world activities.
Meet up with a person with experience that you both like, potentially find a new friend for life.
Key Objectives
Browsing and matching with people with similar interests
Creating a profile which includes photos, personal interests and personality type
Messaging is crucial so they can organise between themselves the experience they want to do in person together and potentially gain a friend “Budy” for life.
My role on the project
I was leading/producing an MVP that meets the business goals and key objectives, conducting research with interviews, competitive analysis, user flows, persona’s, scenarios, ideation(sketches), wireframes, interactive prototypes, UX content, user testing to validate our concepts, digital branding, designs systems, high-fidelity user interface design, project management, stakeholder management & presenting work along the way.
Research
The client mentioned a lot about all the dating apps how their features can help and support this product in a different way. Undergoing one on one interviews with users using competitive products, we needed to identify what users require and desire to discover and read a through profile of a user to gain an invite to meet up and do an experience they both enjoy doing.
It came apparent that there were pain points and goals from the interviews and that these will be look at and considered in design of this product.
key Insights
Hard to find genuine and real people.
Need to feel safe using this app.
More content about the person will really help us to understand them more not just by their profile image.
Has been more physical appearance and not showcasing personality.
More content with photos will show more about themselves. Which helps with our decision
Profile easy to follow and make main buttons clear and visible.
Show people I’ve connected with and chat.
Users like to view a complete profile with Info about them, pictures, experiences, hobbies and answered responses to questions.
They prefer to meet someone close to them as well, so they don’t have to travel far to catch up in person.
Competitive Analysis
Undergoing a competitive analysis, I also needed to make sure we considered the appropriate features to include in this product so user can action what seeks fit to achieve the desired goal of likeminded individuals to connect on shared interests/ real world activities. After reviewing the competitors features, strength, and weakness I believe these are the key things to implement into this product.
· Simple swiping and button functionality
· Only potential matches are shown
· Unique profile with photos and more content.
· Mutual matches & messaging
· Filter potential matches with select filters
Persona’s
The solution was to create a story telling approach about the actual person with the right specific content to understand the persons personal interests, hobbies and really getting to know who they are by scrolling through their profile.
From the client’s requirements the onboarding process makes the user start creating their profile but with some screens we give the option to skip, so they can see and understand the function of the app. Therefore, it will encourage them to continue the completion of their profile to increase their changes of connecting with someone.
First round of ideation was created with feedback from the research, personas creation so that I could reflect on what we should be reminded of what elements, content to include. As presenting this to the client the feedback I received was not emphasising on the user’s experiences that they enjoy doing, the concept was not unique enough for the feature and profile exploration was not exciting. Also remove the maybe screen, change likes you screen to friend invite screen based on what experience the user action on and incorporate Personality type.
Sketches - Iterations & New Design
User Story
As a first-time user I want to discover profiles to find a suitable likeminded individual with common interests and send an invite on the chosen experience so that that we can meet up and do that experience we both enjoy doing together and potentially gain a friend “Budy” for life.
Wireframes
Building the wireframes, I created two different CTA buttons for the cards display the content of the users experience that they love doing. The ideas were to make it very clear for the user that this primary action for user to engage with. After conducting A/B testing, Variation A only got 50% like it they weren’t sure about the wording. Some felt it wasn’t necessary and took away from the hand. Variation B got 100% liked the hand in the circle. They all knew it was a button to click only suggestion was make it bigger. The 5 question cards users preferred them small with the rounded corners and the smaller feel bring more attention to the large, answered content.
Usability Testing
Conducting usability testing feedback came from the Budy requests screen user felt the originally design with too much content and thought you should make the user view their profile and then make the design not display that option at first. The decline and match button felt it will get lost when scrolling through the profile, so much it more prominent.
