Local
Timeline
6 weeks / 240 hours
Roles
UX Researcher
UI Designer
Branding
Deliverables
Research plan
User Interviews
Branding & UI Kit
Wireframes - Low, Mid, High Fidelity
Prototype
Usability Testing
Tools
Figma
Miro
Optimal Sort
Project
Responsive Website
Overview
Moving is a major life event that disrupts our sense of community and ways of being connected and engaged in our local neighborhoods. People need help reigniting community and establishing connection once they have made a move to a new place.
Rebuilding community and connection can be a challenging endeavor to do on your own and often leads to connection taking longer to build, and leaves people feeling isolated for longer than they need to be. Developing a service that helps people to build authentic, meaningful connections not only helps well being but can lead to people staying in places longer.
The Problem
Many people have moved during the pandemic and their normal ways of rebuilding community had been removed. People need help making meaningful connections that add value to their life.
This case study explores creating a service that helps adults create meaningful new friendships based on phase of life needs and shared interests.
Moving to a new city can be challenging.
Empathize
Process: Competitive Analysis, User Interviews
In order to best meet business goals and user needs it was important to understand what challenges users face when moving to a new area in regards to creating community to best design a product that would help them in creating meaningful social and community engagement
My research encompassed the following goals:
Understand user motivation for moving to a new place.
Learn how the moving process impacts people emotionally, financially, physically - what mindset are they in when beginning to build new community?
Pain points, learn what challenges users experience in the moving process, learning about their new area, and feeling settled.
Explore what connection and community mean to users, what types of connection are they most in need of?
Discover what questions and challenges users experience when beginning to build community in a new place.
Learn what products currently exist to help users build community.
Research Goals
User Interviews
Demographic: 5 users (1 male, 5 female)
Ages 33 - 38 (Single, married, with and without children)
All users have moved within the last 18 months
Method: Interviews were conducted remotely over Zoom (30 minutes)
Topics: Participants were asked about their experiences with moving to a new city and building community.
What decisions go into people making a move to a new place?
How does phase of life impact creating community when moving to a new place?
What is the impact on users of not having or having community?
What types of community do people seek? Is this similar or different to what actually makes them feel connected?
How do people start to create community in new places?
What barriers and challenges do people encounter in building community when moving to a new place (internal vs external factors) and how can we help users overcome these with our service?
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis revealed the following key insights:
Insight 1: Competitors help users find activities that match their interests as well as suggested events, nothing gets user out of comfort zone.
Action: Designing suggested events based on user goals is a way to help users grow and differentiate product from competitors.
Insight 2: The UI of strong competitor sights is clean and easy to visually process with clear, cohesive card systems used on mobile and desktop.
Action: Design UI to reduce the cognitive load of the user, develop a strong card system to highlight offerings.
Insight 3: Platforms do not currently make strong offerings in relation to helping users build meaningful friendships.
Action: Create a strong, purposeful feature for suggesting friends will allow Local to differentiate within the market.
Key Takeaways:
Disconnect of Desires + Actions: Users described wanting meaningful connections, yet their actions did not reflect prioritizing this with how they spent their time.
Phase of life: Users expressed wanting to find matches for friendship based on their unique phase of life (single, children, etc.) but wanted to not filter out based solely on this factor.
Pain Points: All users that they did not have a lot of time and wanted a low time investment, high yield solution to finding community.
Personality: Introverts expressed that they had become even more introverted during the pandemic and wanted to be pushed out of their comfort zone to meet new people.
“I might filter out the people I currently love.”
Define
Process: Affinity Map, Personas, Site Map, Product Road Map, User Flow, Task Flow
Affinity mapping (see Affinity Map) and analysis of user interviews uncovered insights around user needs, and decision making behavior.
Two distinct user personas were developed.
The Urban Parent: They need and want activities that support their phase of life with children and ways to be social as an adult.
The Single Professional: They are introverted but desire more connection than what they are currently receiving. This means they need to go out of their comfort zone meeting new people.
Affinity Mapping & Personas
Site Map
Design Method: Hybrid Card Sorting (6 participants) was used to validate the design of the site using terms generated from user interviews and competitive analysis. 2 facilitated, 4 asynchronous.
Outcome: Majority of participants sorted cards similarly with only major discrepancy coming up with items belonging in My Account vs Friends.
Goal: Allow users to navigate site and tasks with ease and clarity.
The Urban Parent
User Flow & Task Flow
Based on the needs of the two personas created, the following User Flow and Task Flows were developed.
Users described that they would want personalization in the events received (account creation) and that they would want low energy investment, high reward experiences (rating the events provides feedback and a way for users to quickly assess groups through their event ratings.)
The Single Professional
Task Flow: A new user creates an account
User Flow: A new user browses events.
“Help! I have a pandemic toddler. He needs friends.”
“I’m an introvert so I want smaller groups with meaningful connection. ”
Task Flow: Post Event Review
Design (Ideate & Prototype)
Ideate Process: Low Fidelity Sketches, Mid Fidelity Wireframes
Prototype Process: Branding, UI Kit, High Fidelity Wireframes, Working Prototype
Screens: User Account Creation, Post Event Review task flow.
Outcome: Prioritized design elements noted in user interviews and research
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Branding & UI Kit
High Fidelity Wireframes
Homepage
Community Rating
Suggested Events & Friends
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
Account Creation
1) Customization by sharing interests.
2) Challenging users to set a goal and purpose to make their time on platform meaningful.
3) Card systems for events and groups to show important information.
Post Event Review
1) Clear ways to rate event based on user priorities.
2) Slider feature for ratings to engage users.
Account Creation
Post Event Review
Screens: User Account Creation, Post Event Review
Outcome: Multiple iterations of Mid Fidelity wireframes helped create stronger systems for event ratings and clear card systems.
Screens: Review Event Dashboard, Community Rating, Suggested Events & Friends
(See the prototype)
Outcome: Added strong visual elements to make each event feel inviting and reflect feeling like you are at the event, clearly communicate information needed for user decision making.
Branding: I developed the following Brand Values for Local Belonging, Discovery, Welcoming, Memorable, Engaging (See the Mood Board.)
Key factors in branding were imagery that felt inclusive, welcoming and made you feel like you were at the events paired with bright and playful colors. These led to the following UI choices.
UI Choices : Playful logo referencing maps and location, custom icons to showcase suggested friends events that match goals and ratings. Vibrant colors that pair well with accessibility were chosen to compliment clear and accessible fonts.
Post Event Review
Events and Outings Page
Events and Outings Page
Events and Outings Page
Review An Event Dashboard
Test
Process: Usability Testing, Testing Summary, Priority Revisions
Demographic: 5 users (5 female)
Ages 31-38 (Single, married)
All have moved within the past 18 months
Method: 4 Interviews were conducted remotely over Zoom (30 minutes)
1 Interview was conducted guerrilla style in person (30 minutes)
Task: Participants were given a persona and a specific task to complete.
Task 1) Create a new account.
Task 2) Review an event you recently attended.
Qualitative Goals:
Determine if users are able to move through the platform with ease to create an account and to review an event.
Evaluate emotional reaction to features like rating an event, suggested friends, and setting goals, what brings delight or frustration.
Quantitative:
Determine the time it takes for a user to complete the task of creating an account and reviewing an event.
Determine the rate of completion for each task, determine rate of user errors.
Determine how likely a tester would be to use Local in real life.
Usability Testing
Testing Results
Ease of Use
Likelihood of Use
Reaction to Features
Positive responses to suggested events and goal setting
“I really enjoy the goal setting feature. It helps keep me accountable”
“This is so cute, that is a good question. (Event purpose rating)”
“I was never confused.”
80% of participants
rated likelihood of use 9/10 or higher
100% of participants rated ease of use
8/10 or higher
Users Said
Priority Iterations
This product received the most feedback in regards to the UI and the way event ratings were conducted.
Based on user feedback the following iterations were prioritized.
Iteration 1) Clarification on Ratings: Users mentioned wanting a clearer ratings scale and not having 2 questions asked for one rating. This resulted in separating the questions for ratings so as to provided a more accurate ratings scale for each area.
Impact: Clearer ratings which increases user confidence in the events when reading reviews.
Iteration 2) UI Color Palette : Users feedback indicated that there was a desire for a more colorful interface to engage with. I created a more engaging use of color in this iteration.
Impact: UI is more engaging for user with greater visual interest. (This area still has room to grow in future iterations.)
Before
Iteration
Conclusion
Process: Project Summary, Next Steps & Future Iterations
This project allowed me to tap into the human need for connection. Creating a product that served a wide variety of people was a healthy challenge. Though my research, design, and testing process I was able to validate that Local is a product that would genuinely benefit users in creating new meaningful friendships and hobbies in their lives after a move.
Project Summary
Next Steps & Future Iterations
With additional time I would create much more detailed changes to the UI components of this project and change the look and feel of the product. This is the largest area for growth.
Potential future additional iterations could include options to filter events by group sizes, and having the visual hierarchy layout change based on your selected preference (ex: if your focus is friends then suggested friends will show up before suggested events.)
I would also continue to test the iterations with user for greater feedback and implement that into the product design.
