For this class project we were tasked with creating a new app that would play a role in a user's life on a regular basis. We spent a long time ideating to come up with an interesting app that would be timely during the pandemic. We wanted to improve the daily life of our uses and give them a distraction and a creative outlet to share with family and friends.
We discovered through user interviews and surveys that the pandemic and the upcoming holiday season was causing much anxiety and depression as users faced the harsh reality that traditional holiday plans and events would have to be canceled. Thus leaving them isolated and in need of a safe space to make meaningful connections and holiday memories during this unprecedented time.
We believe that by providing a virtual environment platform we will be able to create an all inclusive social experience for users to connect with family and friends. We might do this by allowing users to coordinate virtual classes chosen by the users interest. Including features such as private and public video classrooms. Choose or be invited to activities based on genre. Revisit saved classes or meetings at your convenience. Doing this will allow users to engage with family and friends through a tailored virtual experience.
I was tasked with product and project management. I was also responsible for most of the UI design and the company branding efforts. I lead a small team of 4 individuals and delegated tasks to keep our team moving efficiently through this design effort.
• Miro
• Figma
• Trello
• Google Form
• Otter
• Illustrator
• Photoshop
• Invision
The design process for Stay n Play was shaped by principles of design thinking methodology. We worked through these steps to achieve our end goal of creating an app that would bring joy to our users and create a virtual platform for people to connect in meaningful ways while maintaining safety.
We began with a survey to gather data to assess basic demographic information regarding potential users. We were looking for insight into their social activity habits, and to see how the pandemic was affecting that aspect of their lives. We also wanted to discern how the pandemic was affecting their holiday plans. As well as the toll isolation was taking on their mental and physical wellbeing.
We had a total of 100 respondents to our online survey we had several key finding that help guide this design.
We conducted 5 user interviews to gain insight on how people are navigating through the pandemic and how it has affected their ability to connect with people.We also wanted insight into activities our users participate in and how that had changed.
We conducted competitor analysis to see what our competitors were doing and how they were meeting this moment. We ran an analysis on
Opportunity- From this research we discovered there was not an all inclusive virtual activity platform. Which gave us the ability to create a truly unique experience that wasn't already available and help users connect and plan activities virtually.
We began by creating a proto-persona based on our assumption of who our target user would be. We used the information gathered from the interviews and created an empathy map to help us start visualizing our end users motivation, pain points, and general feelings.
Meet Sarah, a young mom who is the life of any party. She loves connecting with her community as a social worker and she is dedicated to the betterment of society. Her hobbies are cooking, gardening, and crafting. With the pandemic Sarah is struggling to keep it all together. With everyone being stuck at home she is struggling to stay connected with her community, spend quality time with her husband, and keep her two young boys occupied, while also maintaining her mental health.
We began by brainstorming features that may solve Sarah’s problems by using the I like, I wish, and What if method. From there we used a prioritization matrix to visualize the complexity and user impact to help direct our focus. Due to our limited time we then voted on features we felt were most important to Sarah and her goals within our app this helped us establish the scope of this project.
Next we create a user flow to help us visualize how Sarah would move through the app and see how many pages we would need to create to provide an immersive experience.
With a clearer picture of the app and how Sarah would move through it. We created a storyboard to identify any pain points that could arise as she navigates through the experience to address and eliminate those pain points before we moved into screen design.
From this exercise we discovered a major pain point for Sarah once registering for a class she would have to go to the store and contend with masks, uncertainty, and potential unavailability of items needed. Which led to our integration of Insta cart and Amazon to alleviate this pain point for her.
We began by independently creating paper wireframes to ideate what we felt the experience should look like. Below is a sample of the screens I created.
After that we reconvened and discussed our solutions. We then combined our design and created a prototype.
See the full LOW fidelity prototypeAfter several rounds of user testing we devised solutions to solve user pain points and created our final prototype
See the full High fidelity prototypeWith the completion of our low fidelity prototype we moved onto testing. We ran usability test with 6 users. We discovered some common pain points during this process.
1. Users didn’t know what to do after the invitation was copied and what that meant. If they did understand they didn't want to leave the app to send link to family and friends
• Solution- Allow users to send link directly using IOS system
2. Users were unsure where the preference were or why they mattered.
• Solution- Was to simplify the account screen and give users less options to make the experience clear and easier to follow
3. They were confused by how to see classes they had already registered for
• Solution- Create a clear section to view my classes in the dropdown menu and add button at the end that would let the user view classes.
In retrospect and now that I am revisiting this case study to add it to my portfolio. I have honestly discovered so many things I would do differently today. I see many holes and errors in this design but it is an amazing representation of where I was at the time and how far I have truly come in my personal journey in this field. I am still very proud of this project and my leadership skills demonstrated to keep my team on task.
