Unify
A place to find friends within your community
Duration
5 months, March-July 2024
My Role
Solo UI/UX Designer/Researcher
About
With social media activity rising and becoming a huge factor in many people’s lives nowadays, businesses are given the opportunity to successfully promote their businesses through outreaching more individuals. With so many new pop-ups around, it’s hard for users to catch every upcoming event, feeling completely overwhelmed with executing a plan with friends. Therefore, how do we make planning and making friendships seamless for users? Are we able to increase community participation and create deeper bonds within different communities around something as enjoyable as food.
Goals
Unify is an app made to increase community participation over a shared love for food and going out. The app creates a safe environment for making friends in your community over a shared love for food and it’s easy to use.
Create a seamless experience for users to make plans with people in their community
Increase activity participation around the community
Bring people together over a shared love for food
-
01. Emphasize
- Research Questions
- User Interviews & Key Findings
- Pain Points & Goals
-
02. Discover
- User Journey Mapping
-
03. Develop
- User Flows
-
04. Design
- Low Fidelity Wireframes
- Style Guide
- High Fidelity Mockups
-Prototypes
-User Testing
-
05. Recollect
- Challenges
- What’s Next
01. Empathize
Research Questions
What causes people to want to go out?
Are there any constraints in participating in activities?
How do people usually find out about activities happening around the area?
“What is motivating or deterring you from going out?”
Motivations:
Trying new places, Catching up
Discouragements:
Price, Location, Time
“What’s the thought process behind picking an activity with your friends?”
Affordable
“. . . everything nowadays cost money”
Location
“I want to explore places outside of . . .”
New Experience
“It’s really about the people”
“Does the activities you pick vary based on who you are with?”
Partner
“Shared experience with different perspectives”
Friends
“I want to make sure I stay connected with friends”
Family
“I wouldn’t take them to the bars ”
User Interviews & Key Findings
User interviews are crucial in the beginning stages as a way to learn more about the problem itself from a user’s standpoint and their pain points without making design decisions yet. Five participants between the ages of 18 and 30 were recruited based on their compatibility from an initial screener survey.
Pain Points & Goal
Pain Points
Dietary restrictions
The time it takes to get to a location
Having affordable options
Finding places quickly
Meeting new people in the community
Goals
Filters to limit options
Ease in deciding where to go
Better budgeting options
Find a community
Sharing experiences with people
02. Discover
User Journey Mapping
User journey mapping displays the experience a user has when interacting with the app.
Full-time worker with structured lifestyle
User problem solved
→
←
Wants to make friends in his community
Tries using Unify
Finds great options and matches with new people
→
←
Proceeds to filter out his needs
Gets a bunch of new recommendations around his area
↓
Matched with 2 new users in the community
→
←
03. Develop
User Flows
After gaining insight about the primary needs of the users, user flows were constructed to organize potential user interaction. The user flows will help you understand how users interact with a product and the steps it takes to complete a task.
Flow #1: Initial App Setup
Flow #2: Finding a Restaurant
Flow #3: Matching for a Restaurant
Below is an example of the user flow for Flow #1.
Legend
Start/End
Process
Decision
Home Page
Profile Page
Log In
Sign Up
↓
Username
→
→
→
→
→
Password
↓
Authentication
→
About You
→
→
Profile
→
Log In Information
Welcome Page
→
Open App
↓
04. Design
Low Fidelity Wireframes
After mapping out the user flows, I was able to sketch and create a layout of the screens. Building the low fidelity wireframes help better visualize the design goals of each screen.
Below is an example of the user flow for Flow #1.
Style Guide
Colors
#2299C9
High-Fidelity Mockups
After conducting usability testing and working through branding, I created high fidelity mockups.
Usability Testing
Key Insights:
Users main concern initially were price and distance. As I conducted further usability testing, there was a concern for more filters. They wanted to know more about the cuisine, ratings, and options for dietary restrictions. Additionally, we discovered that a slider feature would be more helpful to determine their price and distance comfortability.
Users loved the matching idea because they were eager to meet new people in their community. There was always a question tho, "How are you determine who is a successful match?" Well, to make the process more seamless and safe for them we incorporated a matching questionnaire that prioritized the user's needs. Crucial factors that users noted were number of seats available, gender, age restrictions, and more. With this new questionnaire, users are more aware of who they are going to be meeting.
→
Prototype
I created the prototype through Figma, focusing on the three essential user flows previously listed.
To view the full prototype, please click here.
Typography
Font Family: Montserrat
#FF718D
#C95222
#FFFCEA
→
#000000
#E359AA
#A5A5A5
→
#FFFFFF
→
→
05. Recollect
Challenges
As I worked through the project, I learned not only a lot about how users view friendship, but also how much work goes into creating authentic relationships. I was able to gain valuable insight on what it means to be a UX designer and how to adapt your original design to fit the needs of your target audience. Through the five months, I've ran into several challenges.
Branding: Figuring out my company's identity was a little difficult especially playing with my color palette. I wanted to choose colors that were colorful and fun to depict the company's goal of community and building relationships.
Matching: The matching process was originally difficult to sort out because my users had quite a lot of confusion on how they were being matched in the beginning. I wanted this to be a safe app where users felt comfortable with who they were meeting and could trust the process, but also give them the control on whether or not they liked their matches.
What's Next
If this app were to be further developed, there would be additional features added based on the final user testing.
For example:
Messaging system
Ability to change reservation dates with your group
Report system for restaurants and users to prevent fraud
Ice breaker questions for matching
Customer reviews section on restaurants