Product Summary
WeConnect is a social app that helps people moving to new places find events to attend to meet new friends.
Timeline
Feb 2023 - Mar 2023 (1 month)
Role and Responsibilities
Product Designer: User Research, Research Synthesis, Visual Design, Wire-framing, Prototyping, Usability Testing
The Problem
Only 20% of people show up to social events they sign up for
When people move to a new city or town, many struggle to meet new friends. Data shows that most people don't actually attend events they sign up for. This discrepancy not only impacts organizers, but also indicates that there might be a problem with attendance.
Solution Preview
Cost effective features that incentives users to attend events
Enable Community Building
  • Go With a Buddy feature enables attendees to connect with someone at the event
  • Buddies are volunteer members who share mutual interests and provide support for newcomers
  • Profile and Add Friend features encourage users to engage with the community
Using Effective Reminders
  • Disable unnecessary notifications by default and only enable critical ones
  • Allow users to export events to Google Calendar, not just device calendar
Reducing Social Anxiety
  • What to Expect feature gives a chronological breakdown of event agenda
  • Buddies provide a sense of familiarity and support at the event
See Prototype
Project Management
Aligning business goals with user needs
Before starting any project, I like to figure out what the goals are. For WeConnect, my high level goal was to design a social experience that will help users get out and do activities in-person. To ensure my solution is viable, I took into consideration the business's goals and aligned them with the needs of the target users.
  1. Make it easy for people to find and attend events
  2. Incentivize people to show up for events they signed up for
  3. Have a more effective way to remind people of upcoming events
Understanding the goals is important for my process. They serve as key objectives when I'm designing solutions and help me stay focus and motivated when completing my tasks throughout the project.
Identifying constraints early on to understand project impact
In addition to setting goals, I also like to identify constraints early on to make sure I complete the project on time with the correct specifications. For this project, these were the constraints I had to keep in mind:
  • Time: 3 week deadline
  • Budget: Cost effective solution
  • Technical: Mobile or desktop application
Creating a project plan to stay on track
Since I only had 3 weeks to complete everything, I created a project plan to better manage my time and expectations. The plan breaks down the design process into six phases, with actionable tasks for each and an expected date of completion. This ensures that I stay on track to deliver by the deadline.
User Research
Diving deeper into user behaviors to gain more insights
Once the project logistics were figured out, I started analyzing the data provided by the product manager.
According to company data, users may not be getting effective communications about upcoming events, and that they might need more of an incentive to attend.
Given this, I wanted to understand user motivations on a deeper level and decided to send out a survey. A survey would provide plenty of data points to quantify and help answer why people drop out of events.
Synthesizing survey data to define solution requirements
My survey received 34 responses and I was surprised to learn that most people didn't drop out because of logistical reasons.
"Most people dropped out of events because they felt too much social anxiety."
Knowing this was extremely helpful when designing a solution. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to send out another survey to learn how people cope at events if they have anxiety so I did some secondary research instead. I learned that uncertainty about future events is a primary factor that can contribute to anxiety. and that people are more likely to attend an event if they know someone who is also going. Having uncovered these insights, I mapped them to a solution requirement to ensure they all get addressed in the final product.
Key Insights
Solution Requirements
Most people drop out of events due to social anxiety
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Have features to help reduce anxiety while attending events
Users may not be getting effective communications about upcoming events
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Have an effective way to remind people of upcoming events
People are more likely to attend an event if they know someone going
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Have cost effective features that enable community building
Competitive Analsyis
Creating art boards for ideas and improvements
Once I had the solution requirements defined, I started looking at apps that were popular in the social event space, mainly MeetUp, Facebook and Discord. I was looking to evaluate them for what they did well and what improvements can be made, which can translate into features to include in my app.
Facebook
Industry standard for social app and information architecture
Likes
  • Good visual hierarchy when displaying event details
  • Able to see events friends are going to
Improvements
  • Make the UI less formal and more fun
  • Be able to see list of all attendees and their profiles
MeetUp
Ease of use in finding nearby social events
Likes
  • Push notification customization
  • Notifications for event updates
Improvements
  • Better grouping of notifications
  • Support ability to see events in calendar format
  • Make it easier to find events users signed up for
Discord
Active community building
Likes
  • Able to chat in channels/servers for active community building
  • Engaging UI, shows user online status, fun emojis and other chat features
Improvements
  • Make it easier to discover different servers/channels
  • Better organization for servers
Ideating
Creating user flows to define page navigations
Now that I had a list of features I wanted to include, I had to think about what the interactions for the app would be like. In order to help me envision that, I created two user flows to help me establish the pages I needed to prototype.

These were the two key flows I focused on for the MVP.
  • Users can find events to attend, where they can be matched with a buddy
  • Users can see a list of events they're attending
The red routes for the MVP satisfy the core requirements of easily helping users find nearby events to attend while helping to reduce their social anxiety.
Sketching out key solution ideas
Due to the time constraint, I decided to make low fidelity sketches of my solutionsfor testing. My focus was to test the following major features: 

Go With a Buddy, Chat, Profile
Notification, Event Calendar, Event Agenda, Event Details
Testing
First round of testing to identify major usability issues
I tested my sketches with 5 participants. My focus was to identify major usability issues early on in order to address them before creating the high fidelity mockups to save me time. Here are two major improvements I made after testing.
Improving the copy for enabling notification
Users were very against turning on notifications and could not distinguish the difference between important notifications grouped at the top and non important ones at the bottom. They ended up disabling all of them as a result.
ChangeModified the copy to show that the app recognizes spamming is an issue and by default will only enable critical notifications while disabling non critical ones.
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Result5/5 users appreciated this feature and all opted to keep critical notifications on.
Repositioning and redesigning core features to encourage click-through
It was difficult for users to find out more information about the Go With a Buddy feature. They thought the Learn More link led to more details about the event and not to details about Go With a Buddy.
ChangeRemoved the Learn More link, added a try me badge and positioned the feature higher up to encourage users to click on it.
Result5/5 users were able to easily discover the Go With a Buddy feature and click on it to learn more.
Second round of testing to identify major feature enhancements
After iterating on my designs to address the major usability issues, I conducted another round of testing to identify major feature enhancements that could be made to improve the user experience.
Providing more context about the Go With a Buddy feature
Users were intrigued by the Go With a Buddy feature but wanted more details about what the program is, specifically who the volunteers were and why they signed up.
ChangeAdded a link to a Go With a Buddy FAQ page with the option to contact for more information.
Effectively remind users by using their preferred communication channels
Users mentioned that they would like the ability to export the events to their Google calendar since they use it frequently to manage their schedules.
ChangeAdded a link to export to Google calendar
Visual Design
Creating a style guide to craft consistent designs
For the visual design, I really wanted the app to feel fun and engaging so I went with a dark theme, using colors like red to give it excitement and teal to give it a cool factor. I created this style guide and included sample UI elements to get a sense of what the app would look like.
High Fidelity Mockups
These are some additional high fidelity mockups I created for the app to show the visual design of the app as a whole.
Conclusion
What I learned or would do differently if I had more time

Having a plan helped me finish on time
It was extremely helpful to have a project plan defined, it kept me on track throughout the project and and forced me to be more resourceful, like using a UI kit when designing my high fidelity mockups.

Research more on target users
‍I'd love to learn more about the user's needs and pain points when it comes to social events and how they would  cope in those situations to further refine my solution.
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Conduct additional testing
After iterating on my high fidelity mockups, I'd love to do another round of testing to see if the enhancements really improved the user experience.
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Copyright 2023 © Liz Zheng