Role
January - April
(3-month project)
Timeline
Group
Tool
UX Designer
Project Manager
Jing Tian
Caoyang Shen
Steven Dovrobich
Figma
Miro
Adobe XD
The question of connection is inherently one founded on interactions: interactions amongst community members, interactions between members and their community and environment at large, and interactions facilitated by the sharing of space, virtual or physical.
Our project aims at tackling how we might better and more easily engender and facilitate the development of connections and friendships for those new to such environments.
Problem Statement
Pain point: Language and cultural differences will prevent people from making friends globally
Competitive Analysis
Mainly focus on the relationship established between the native and the goal of dating
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Tinder
Pros:
❤️ Various online activities help you find those who share the same interests.
❤️ Geosical networking makes it possible to learn from people around you quickly.Cons:
💔 The environment is too utilitarian, so just making friends is hard.
💔 It is hard for people from two different cultural backgrounds to understand each other. -
Reddit
Pros:
❤️ Communities enable people to find more like themselves because it includes topics covering almost all identities, ideologies, and interests.
❤️ Foster lively debate, ensuring people join the discussion anytime and anyplace.Cons:
💔 Intra-user interaction is centered around communities, which may be difficult for users to connect one to one.
💔 Users can create fake profiles, which may lead to catfishing issues. -
Travel Pal (analogous competition)
Pros:
❤️ Help find and meet up with new people during the traveling.
❤️ Powerful language translation feature.
❤️ Allow filtering nationality, age, and language according to users’ demands.Cons:
💔 Meanings of plenty of icons on its platform are unclear.
💔 Frequent usage of close colors is not user-friendly to color blind.
Interview
In-person is the key to friendship.
To facilitate building the connection, geosocial features could be used, matching our users considering their interests and the location.
Another one of which is a system that allows users to post their activities and apply for others’ activities, encouraging them to meet in person as soon as possible.
More advanced translation system not only helps users to translate the unknown words, but also provides some basic intrepretations of pop-language and abbreviation.
Result 1
Result 2
Result 3
User Persona
Both are aliens in the US, but they do not want to be alone.
|Ming Cai
|Raj
Storyboarding
How does Ming meet her first friend on our platform?
User Flow
You can invite others to your activities or apply for others’ applications.
Wireframe & Lo-Fi
We get new ideas from heuristic evaluation and user tests based on our wireframing.
User flow of Lo-Fi prototyping
From our original thought, the flow should be very easy. However, when we went through several heuristic evaluations and user testing, we realized there were so many details we had not considered. Communication design is highly complex if we want to make our users match with others smoothly.
Efficient to meet with each other
There is a sticky note on the chat page to remind users of the place and the time of the activity. The map page supports users to determine the place together. Meanwhile, the second screen on the main page helps the user check the other's message while he or she is on the map page.
User-friendly to global users
After matching with another user, our user can go chatting with the matched. Because our goal is to facilitate immigrants to make friends with the locals, we provide translation features along with each chat box and hints for users to greet appropriately.
Safe sign-up page
During the whole design process, our interviewee and participants of the test all conveyed their concerns on safety. Therefore, we put a big emphasis on users' safety due to our geosocial functions. Therefore, before checking the terms and services, users are required to read thoroughly terms and services rather than just checking directly. We also directly show their meeting location on our map page.
Business ideas
We recognize that the value of the product is not only to give users a good experience but also can earn money for future development. Therefore, we allow the users to buy the premium on our platform. With the premium, they can always be seen by the host first during the application.
Hi-Fi Design
Based on the feedback from users, we give our solutions.
UI Kits
Reflection
I never thought that social media had so many interactive features until I started designing a social product by myself. On the premise of ensuring that the learning curve is relatively flat, a social product needs to give users the joy of exploration. At the same time, commercialization is also very important for social media. How to make users willing to consume on our platform is also a consideration in our design
The project is not without its faults, so in the future, I would like to improve the protection mechanism for users’ safety and privacy, allowing users to meet offline with security and pleasure.
01. The argument is avoidable and necessary for good design
The product was entirely collaborative, and our final design came from input from my teammates, our potential users, and our professor Julie Hui. During teamwork, disputes happen often. However, the argument is not meaningless. Instead, along with the argument each time, our idea, prototyping design and details were progressing gradually. Thanks to our respect and understanding among the team, our product can be realized from just a small and immature idea in the head.
02. Different design tools
In addition, during the design process, I became more familiar with the tools like Miro, Figma, and Adobe XD, learning about the advantages and disadvantages of each tool sufficiently. To achieve a better result, taking advantage of different design tools is necessary.
