LINKUP
Overview
Hanging out with a group of friends is fun, however, there are moments of turbulence in our meetups due to miscommunications and confusion between the plans in our head.
From hearing my friends complain about being unable to get together due to “last minute cancellations” or “lack of communication,” ideas started filling my mind with ways I could somehow help.
Through this project, my partner Kevin and I sought to explore how we could make group planning organized and efficient. We wanted to create fluid group communication as well as make group planning organized and convenient to check.
Role: UX Research, UI Design
Partner: Kevin Tsai
Duration: 5 days
Tools: Google Forms, Figma, Maze
In a Snapshot
Design Process: Double Diamond
Discover: Surveys, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping
Define: Problem Statement, User Personas, User Flow, User Storyboards, Competitive Analysis
Design: Wire-Framing, Usability Testing, User Feedback, Testing Data Analysis, Creating Hi-Fi Designs
Deliver: Iterate with more testing data analysis, heat map analysis, finalizing Hi-Fi Designs
Discover
User Surveys & Interviews
My partner and I first sought out to learn more about how people behave when planning hang outs and trips. I dug out details specific to what planning methods were used, how they were applied, and how people felt about existing solutions to their planning needs. We did so through the application of multiple research techniques including surveys and user interviews.
Key Takeaways
Pain points lie primarily in planning for longer trips (1+ days) as opposed to multi-hour hangouts
People dread planning longer trips because:
Creating an organized plan is hard and time consuming
Communication gets messy when changes in plans occur
Affinity Mapping
In order to synthesize and organize the data from our user surveys and interviews, we utilized affinity mapping by organizing related ideas and points into clusters.
This allows us to define the users’ pain points and plan for future product features that resolves those issues.
Key Takeaways
People usually create and communicate group plans to keep everyone on the same page by sending messages on social media (e.g. Discord, Messenger, etc.)
The least favorite things that occur when making friends plan is that people are indecisive, hard to find a time that works for everyone, and planning for events is scattered (some people prefer to send direct messages rather than the group chat, no one wants to take the initiative to plan events)
Some challenges that people face when formulating plans include scheduling/timing issues, miscommunication, and lack of action taken (indecisive where to eat, hangout, etc.)
User Personas
After sorting UX findings and ideas that users commonly say, we established 2 primary users: the planner and the follower.
Once we have both users in mind, our goal is to design a product that fits both “the planner” and “the follower’s” needs. Therefore, we can create an easy & organized way to create trip plans for the planner so that the follower can reference it wherever needed.
Key Takeaways
Planner: needs a way to create a simple and organized trip plan for their friend group
Follower: needs a way for their friends to document their trip plans somewhere so they can reference it whenever needed
Define
User Pain Points
📕 Primarily on planning for longer trips
Our original hypothesis focused on multi-hour hangouts. However, through user interviews, we discovered that day trips and multi-day plans actually posed the most significant challenges in terms of turbulence and planning difficulties.
We identified this early on, which allowed us to adjust our user interview questions to better address the true source of planning issues.
📂 Creating an organized plan is hard and time consuming
Someone has to take the initiative to create a plan and get everyone’s schedules together.
🤯 Communication gets messy when changes in plans occur
When planning group events, there are often moments of turbulence in meetups due to miscommunications and confusion.
How might we devise helpful and accessible ways for students to hangout?
After having figured out the main categories that users mentioned, we can now define the core problem that users face.
Market Research
Based on the user pain points, we conducted market research to find the most efficacious features and solutions.
This is for us to understand our competitor’s strengths and weaknesses to help us figure out what our final project concept is. What can we learn from existing solutions? Where do current solutions fall short?
Key takeaways:
Planning apps need to be simple (on same level or easier to use) as a Google Doc - or it becomes more of a hassle to use.
Several competitors focused on too many aspects of travel planning, resulting in the planning features being too complicated to use
If the planning functionality doesn't provide more value than a shared Google doc, there is no incentive for users to use it.
Mission: We need to develop a solution that is as easy to use as a Google Doc, but with added functionality that meets the core needs of our target users.
Product Challenges & Goals
Not everyone wants to help with planning group events since it is disorganized and time consuming.
💡How might we simplify the process of creating an organized group plan?
Let’s face it, it is hard to bring everyone on the same page. No matter how hard we try to get everyone together, there are unexpected miscommunication and cancellations.
💡How might we keep everyone updated on the group plan?
So it seems like everyone carries a smartphone around, so what if we could design a mobile application?
💡How might we create a group plan accessible anywhere?
Rice Analysis
To determine what features we’d like to address in our solution, we utilized a RICE analysis to prioritize the most essential and beneficial features for users to use.
This was based on overall importance to our product goals (as a score calculated from reach, impact, confidence and effort).
Key Takeaways:
Core features solve core problems
Make it visual - easy for people to reduce the cognitive load required to understand the content so we can incorporate the create trip plan feature
It is time consuming to create a plan, thus we can incorporate the share plan and join an existing trip plan features to allow multiple editors to collaborate at once
Design
Initial Wireframing
Once we did the research thoroughly, we started to explore possible solutions, generate as may ideas as possibles, and evaluate them based on the framed problem. Since we are in the diverging phase, we keep an open mind by thinking broadly on which features to implement in the app. Of course, there are no limitations in our possibilities while we get user feedback and make changes to the app.
We started designing by creating wireframes and improving them based on user feedback
User Testing
Deliver
Personalized Plan
The ability to come up with a personalized plan allows users to create a simple, organized plan that is straightforward for them to use.
Join & Share Plan
Through expressed feedback in user interviews, one prevalent pain point of many users was the feeling of miscommunication and last-minute cancellations. Join and share plan are features to promote a collaborative space for users to view and edit the trip itinerary together.
Add Activities & Edit
Given that people value convenience and efficiency of having access to the shared plan, therefore adding activities and editing the plan is needed, even during the trip so everyone can stay-up-to date!
Reflection & Future Improvements
Don’t make assumptions: Initially, I assumed college students plan group hangouts with complex planners and countless messaging with friends. Unfortunately, my assumption was completely wrong when we conducted user research—college students use planners to plan longer events/trips.
Refer back to the design process: During the 5-day sprint, I often felt rushed and easily got lost when determining which stage of the design process I was in. Luckily, we laid out the clear steps we would take in each stage of the double diamond process so we can track our progress.
Prioritize users: The biggest takeaway for me has to be learning how to listen and empathize with my users, and applying their concerns to design decisions. Essentially, they are the ones using the app.