The goal of this project was to create an application from scratch. After doing some initial research within my community, I discovered that a lot of people who had moved to a new place had a difficult time making new friends.
Overview:
Sole designer responsible for end-to-end creation, ranging from user interviews to prototyping and usability testing.
Responsibilities:
Timeline:
Approximately 140 hours
Project type:
Designlab case study.
The problem: People who have recently made a big move want to foster meaningful friendships.
I conducted a brief friends and family poll and found that many reported difficulty finding new friends in their area after moving to a new place.
The solution: Grove allows users to discover meaningful connections with others based on mutual interests.
To gain more insight after my initial conversations with people, I decided to conduct both user interviews as well as surveys, so I could gather both qualitative and quantitative data on users’ experience with making new friends.
Research Methods
I conducted a total of 5 interviews and 13 participants took my survey. After analyzing both sources of data, two themes were the most salient:
Users have a strong desire to make new connections, but have a hard time doing so due to social anxiety.
Users reported wanting a way to make friends organically, rather than through something similar to a dating app.
Key Insights
“I have used dating apps, but I don’t love them and try to avoid them. On a lot of these apps I feel like people are putting on a front.”
“I would more likely use [the internet] to find activities in my area, to find people with similar interests.”
“I joined Facebook groups to connect with others in the community. I am more likely to use groups with similar interests or experiences.”
In order to represent the feedback I gained from my research, I created two personas that embodied the main pain points that I gathered.
Personas
Claire represents the users who want to find a way to make meaningful connections that is different than the usual dating and friend-finding apps.
Taylor represents the users who experience social anxiety and want to get to know their companions a bit before meeting in person.
Once I gathered all of my research and personas, I began to brainstorm and sketch possible ways I could help users make connections with others in their area who have similar interests, while keeping their pain points in mind. I wanted to create a space where users could not only find others like themselves, but where they could safely and comfortably foster these connections before meeting in person.
Ideation
When I began my sketches, I kept in mind some typical layouts I have seen used in other social media applications, in order to maintain familiarity with my users. I also wanted to make sure that my users had a few options for finding different groups and events.
I created mid-fidelity wireframes for three task flows: creating an account, creating a profile, and joining a group. However, after some helpful feedback from a group critique, I decided to combine the account and profile creation task flow, and create a third task flow for adding an interest to a profile.
Wireframes
After receiving some peer feedback and beginning to build my high-fidelity screens, I made some changes to my initial layout that made my design less condensed and mobile-friendly.
Iterations
Once I had finished all of my high-fidelity screens, I created prototypes with the Figma Prototype Tool and gathered participants for usability tests. Participants were five adults ranging from ages 22-27 years old. Users were asked to complete three task flows. I measured completion of task, reported ease of each task, and time on task.
Below is a gif of the completed prototype for Task 2: Request to Join a Group. Users were asked to send a request to a specific group called “Women’s Reading”.
Usability Testing
Key Insights
Users suggested adding an edit option in the interest section of the profile page.
Users suggested changing the explore icon in the navigation bar.
Users suggested having a section for interests in the explore section of the app.
Participant Recommendations
Based on my analysis from the usability testing and some feedback from participants, I made the necessary iterations to address any frustrations or confusion the users had.
Priority Revisions
Overall, this project helped me as a designer understand the importance of research when it comes to UX design. I gained valuable insight and feedback from the research I conducted while creating Grove. If given the opportunity, I would like to continue with more usability tests with my new revised versions of my screens. I would also create and test more complex user flows that further exemplify the purpose of Grove such as group chats, group pages, etc.
Next Steps & Conclusion