ComfortConnect
September 2023
1 Week
Roles
Online commerce platform where users can purchase event tickets and meet new friends
Project Type
Individual student project at Springboard
Problem
Background
Design Process
Discover
Design
Validation
Discover
Competitive Analysis
User Interviews
In the next part of the discovery phase, we conducted user interviews to determine which features would benefit our users the most. We interviewed five individuals and focused on three main topics:
Friendship and Social Anxiety: We aimed to understand how people make friends and whether social anxiety affects their ability to form new connections.
Impact of the Pandemic: Given the recent pandemic, we explored how it has impacted people's social skills and their willingness to attend events.
Event Preferences: We inquired about the types of events and activities the interviewees enjoy, and whether the possibility of winning monetary prizes would influence their participation.
After gathering all the responses, we analyzed the data to draw valuable insights.
Insights (from the interviews)
Pandemic Affect Social Skills
Group Settings Help Socialize
Friends Invite to Events
Usually friends invite participants to events or other activities.
Monetary Value Motivation
Many participants are willing to accept monetary value to attend events and activities.
Making Friends in Person
Most of the participants prefer making friends in person and getting to know them through mutuals.
Meeting New People
Most participants met new friends when going out or traveling.
Personas
After the user interviews, we created user personas for Vincent Stanley and Allie Thorton. These two personas were created based on the responses we have received from the user interviews. Vincent Stanley is more of an introvert that enjoys being at home and talking to his friends online. He wants to socialize and be outside more. As for Allie Thorton, she is very career orientated and finds it difficult to make friends due to scheduling and interests. These two personas give us an idea of what the average user might want in the application.
User Flows
Creating an UI Kit
Desktop
Mobile
Design
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Updating Design Kit
After creating the low fidelity wireframes, we used our design kit to implement all the changes to the project. The next step was for us to add the colors, images, and different designs to give a better understanding of the project and to prepare it for user testing.
User Testing
After the low fidelity wireframes and updating the project with the design kit, we are able to move onto user testing. For the user testing, we used the same five people we used for the user interviews in the beginning. We had some tasks for the users and overall wanted to see how they navigated and what UI elements were confusing to the users. This user testing allows us to incorporate more changes into the high fidelity wireframes. Here are the top changes we needed to make based on the reactions and feedback of the users.
Buttons were not uniform
There were some sections where the buttons were different, leading to confusion. Size and color need to match throughout the application.
Progress tracker was hard to see
We could include a slide-up tab for the progress tracker with a nice distinguishable background.
Website lacks 'personality'
There is a lack of illustrations and diverse colors, very bland with a white background.
Text difficult to read
High Fidelity Wireframes
After receiving feedback from the user testing, we implement the changes to the wireframes. Some of the changes we made were adding a background gradient to ensure that it is not too boring and give the project life. Other changes we made were to the ThriveTracker and buttons where the colors were changed to ensure a better user experience. In the end, there is a difference between the low fidelity wireframes and low fidelity wireframes, but we also want to make sure that there are not many big changes where the whole application looks different.
Validation
Reflection
This project was a great experience to be apart of. It has taught me that throughout the project, even though a designer might think they are very aware of the different design elements, there are many element mistakes that might slip under the designer. I went back and forth many times throughout the project working on only one design element, but focusing on perfecting it as much as possible. For the project, I also realized how important user experience is and how seamless it should be to navigate throughout the page and to always be mindful of not adding something to slow down the navigation of users and add new steps in certain user flows.
Takeaways
Perfection isn't always attainable within the constraints of time and deadlines.
If we become too fixated on refining a particular feature or aspect, we risk missing the overall project deadline, which could disrupt the entire design process.
The necessity of always keeping our business objectives at the forefront of our efforts.
Ultimately, our goal was not only to create a product that consumers would enjoy but also to develop a product capable of generating substantial revenue for the company.
Next Steps
Improve communication for upcoming events with maybe pop up notifications or alerts.
Add more in-depth description for the events.
Maybe add a page where users can answer some questions about the event to see if they would actually enjoy it.
Project
Brand Guidelines
Presentation