My Role

Solo student project for Springboard UX/UI Bootcamp

PROBLEM

Students find it hard to make friends when they shift abroad. Due to anxiety issues or fear, they tend not to meet people directly through an application.

As an international student, I’ve noticed how many of my friends were able to persevere in their academic pursuits. Yet, we have failed to accomplish our personal goals. This sparked the question- why was there this disconnect in our lives?

Timeline

November - December 2021

Socialize

RESEARCH

Before diving in and talking to users, I conducted a series of secondary and competitive research. I found the top 5 reasons why people do not end up going include:

1. Panic attacks
2. Difficulty speaking
3. Rapid heart rates
4. Fear of interacting or talking with strangers
5. Being judged by others in social situations

Some ways to improve these processes include:
1. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT)
2. Anxiety management techniques
3. Social skills training
4. Medication

After learning about these issues, there was a better understanding of what should be talking points when interviewing users. As a person who is an introvert, I found myself relating to these common issues and started thinking about websites that I personally have a good experience with a calming effect.

SOLUTION

The goal of the product is to create a social user experience that will help users get out and do activities in person.

Friends keep us company through the difficulties of our lives and help us grow, but when people move to a new city or town, fear and social anxiety can keep them from making new friends.
Business goals include increasing the conversion of accepted invites to event attendees.

Empathising with the users (Survey)

I conducted a Google Forms survey that I posted through my personal networks (Facebook, Instagram Stories, Springboard Slack). The respondents’ age ranged from 32-55 years of age. The key takeaways from the surveys included:

67.2%

Never used event-based
apps to build new connections.

45.9%

clicks "yes, I will attend."
but will never attend.

50.8%

Has obstructed from
taking a good opportunity.

User Interviews

After gathering and analysing data from the survey, I conducted 3 structured interviews to collect beneficial insight from users and their experiences with events.

From the survey, more than half of the respondents missed an excellent opportunity because they had social anxiety, so I could gain further insight into that through interviews. During the interviews, one user mentioned that either they could first know and meet new people over chat so that some people or the rate of “Yes I will increase”, and people might start attending events.
During the interviews, I also wanted to learn more about users' habits and what they felt. More specifically, I wanted to know: what research are customers doing before purchasing?
While the information on a product page was nice-to-have, some users thought about talking with the other people attending the same event first.
During the research synthesis phase, an affinity map and 3 lean user personas were created. Since Manage already had a target user, the lean user personas were created to further empathise with the interviewed users (view the Figma file for research synthesis).
Defining the user tasks, designing the user flows and low fidelity screens, and validating the usability of the overall layout of the future website.

I didn’t want to redesign the social wheel, so I stuck with a familiar social layout. Before designing, I re-studied major event websites and what they had in common in their application layouts. Since several of these businesses used a standard layout, I aimed to keep my designs as close as possible so Socialize had a familiar event experience.

Ensuring the soundness of the wireframes

According to the user research I conducted, attending events alone was a significant issue user expressed their anxiety about, so I designed a chat box, a space to share and talk before participating in the event. Hence, they have and know someone beforehand. I hypothesised that applying this method might increase people’s confidence in attending more offline events and diversify their connections.

Three people tested the wireframes to identify if users would understand the overall interface and structure from their perspective (Interviews). I also tried to determine if any issues may arise in them still not going to attend the events. (view test results and notes).

Validating the high-fidelity screens with a usability test

A usability test was conducted once the first iteration of the high-fidelity screens was created. You can view the usability test script here.

These were the main goals for this usability testing round:
1. Gather feedback and identify if users will understand the interface from their perspective.
2. Identify whether or not the users are willing to attend events now or are still in the same position.
3. Confirm if users will understand the flow.

View the first iteration (V1) of Manage high fidelity screens here.

All in all, there were no major issues with the process. Users were pleased to see the option of chat before you can go to any event alone.

You can view the second iteration (V2) of the high-fidelity screens here.

Summary

In this project, I’m pleased to find that I was on the right track with not reinventing the events/ socialising application wheel. There are so many businesses that have already trial-and-errored the major issues when it comes to reminding the user to go for that event and with no company. The most impactful thing I did on this project was spending time studying businesses that sought to improve their attending events alone.

I learned everything to help them with events, socialise and make as many new connections as they could.

You didn’t fail- you just found 100 ways that didn’t work. From noticing mistakes in my UI to uncovering more foundational UX problems in my app, I’m thankful to have constantly asked for feedback from my peers and my mentor. In the end, I pushed to have the app as best I could, and did not let my own thinking stop me from questioning if my own decisions were truly best for the user.

For more work inquiries or to grab a coffee, do email me at rhea11ghelani@gmail.com ☕️✨
Thank you for reading! 🧠