The Design Process
Compared to previous projects, I worked on a much tighter timeline for I·R·L. I had to narrow down the best methodologies for each step of the process to end with a viable interactive prototype.
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Role: Product Designer
Timeline: 2 months
Deliverables: User research, UX design and visual design.
Right now, people are grappling with re-entering society after a long period of forced isolation. There’s been a 60% increase in people seeking mental health services due to COVID. There have even been new COVID-caused diagnoses including insomnia due to COVID - coronasomnia - and COVID induced PTSD. As governments roll out vaccinations, efforts have been made to return to a less isolated life.
The majority of Americans are feeling some degree of social anxiety as they re-enter public spaces. This social anxiety does not discriminate by age, however, young people specifically feel like they’ve missed out on their ‘fun’ years. This demographic is yearning for normalcy but there is judgement and shame surrounding social activities. No one wants to be publicly called out but it’s precisely because no one knows exactly what is safe.
As new data emerges showing that outdoor and indoor gatherings are safe for vaccinated individuals again, I set out to figure out how I might help ease post-COVID anxiety and encourage young vaccinated individuals to feel less isolated.
Compared to previous projects, I worked on a much tighter timeline for I·R·L. I had to narrow down the best methodologies for each step of the process to end with a viable interactive prototype.
In order to familiarize myself with the problem space, I started with secondary research. Through informational articles, industry reports, and pop culture, I learned about the intersections of COVID, anxiety, and relationship building.
In order to begin my primary research, I found five young people who are single and are trying to actively meet new people. My goal was to better understand how people went out, dated and felt safe dating. I asked several key questions:
I created an affinity map to help organize similar responses and identify themes across my research. I was able to identify a few distinct behavioral traits when it comes to how someone makes connections, picks an activity for a date, uses a dating app, and how they manage any fear of anxiety due to COVID while doing this. Several groups emerged because every person was slightly unique in their responses. Building something that catered to every type of user was going to be difficult with the time constraints so instead, I built a group built on the most similar responses as a basis for the user persona.
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I created a user persona to better identify the most common user type I found emerging from the research. Maya is a young woman who feels ready to get back into the world after an isolating year. She’s vaccinated, her city is opening up, and she’s ready to participate in social events and meet new people.
Her goals include:
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I first want my users to feel safe and comfortable getting back out into a social scene. Additionally, I want them to easily find events, match with attendees, and build connections. I created User Flows so I could figure out how users would complete these critical actions.
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Since this project was meant to be on a more accelerated timeline, I took my flows and put them in Figma to create a very low fidelity clickable prototype that I then guerilla tested with a few users. I wanted to see how users reacted to the hybrid concept of event finding app + dating app. I also wanted to test if users were able to successfully match with another user, send a message to that user, and search for events.
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I discovered that users found navigating between the event and match screens to be confusing. The lack of available bottom nav made it annoying to navigate between screens. Additionally, the filters didn’t do enough to distinguish preferences beyond relationship type. Users wanted to further refine their preferences beyond the available options.
Taking into consideration what I learned from my Lo-Fi testing, I created my Hi-Fi frames. In these iterations, I continued to work on the navigation between home, event screens, and match screens. I fleshed out the preferences overlay when navigating between platonic and romantic matches.
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Unique usability issues that came up during Hi-Fi testing that didn't come up in Lo-Fi testing were around preference options and messaging. I worked to better cater preferences and search options to be inclusive of high-anxiety COVID individuals. From user feedback that reminded me this app is an events + dating hybrid, I worked to make sure users could easily tie their matches back to events they RSVP’d to ultimately easing information organization for the user.
The I·R·L brand is approachable and fun without compromising on individuality. I used funky illustrations and bold colors to create warmth and playfulness. Life had been feeling dark and serious. I·R·L invites users back to the lighter parts of life.
In practice, the bold colors are used to highlight key features. Color also played a big role in differentiating screens but still unifying the overall app. I opted for illustrated event cards instead of real images. Since I was already using bright color, the real images were distracting. Instead, the illustrations helped take out any preconceived notions of what an event might be like and leave it open to interpretation by the user.
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To best serve the users, I created a UX that invites users to set their custom preferences, discover events that most interest them, present the best matches, and cultivate new connections.
The goal of the app is to introduce new users to each other based on shared interests. By not showing users any attendees until after they have RSVP’d to an event, the user is encouraged to follow their interests and individuality first and then find commonalities with other users.
Everyone is going to approach re-entering differently. The plethora of preference options really allow a user to only be shown matches that align with their preferences. Emphasizing COVID safety, users have the ability to filter events based on setting (indoor vs outdoor), online or IRL, and number of attendees.
Messages are organized by event. This allows a user to keep the activity top of mind and prevent mixing up matches + events. The ‘You’re Up’ badge encourages users to keep a conversation going if they haven’t sent a response to a new message yet.
Working on I·R·L, I realized while doing user interviews that the way people choose to approach meeting new people, whether for dating or otherwise, is deeply personal and no two approaches are exactly the same. The decision to try and cater to one specific approach was a tough one because I felt like I was being too exclusive. What I ultimately figured out is that it would be impossible to build a solution that catered to all types of approaches, especially given the time and resource constraints. Sometimes the best solution isn't the all encompassing one.
I’d like to incorporate a way for event organizers to invite users to their events. I’d also like to incorporate user feedback post events. Did a user meet up with their match? How’d it go? Finally, as we move further and further away from COVID, I’d need to re-think some of the COVID related features. Would they still be necessary? Could they be relegated to another space?
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