Due to this global pandemic everyone is advised to stay inside of our homes, which has affected our social life in many different ways but primarily we cannot make new friends that has same interests as us, and not being in contact with the outside world and not having anyone to talk to can make you depressed and depression can affect people in bad ways. The challenge for the term project of UX100 was to: Organize local online or socially distanced meetups for Laurier students with similar interests. I created this app for all the students in general, they can chose their university and login with their id and password to access their university’s app.
The interviews were conducted on my family members and also 3 of my friends studying in a university and are studying from home due to this global pandemic. The results showed that they were also being bored by not going to university and meeting their friends and also not being able to make new friends. So I told them my idea and asked for feedback and I received very good feedback on the idea of making an app that can connect you with the people who have same interests. Also by conducting research on the internet I found out that there are apps that can help you connect to people on the internet and there are other apps that can help you talk and meet on the internet, but there were no apps or websites where you can find people with similar interests as you and also talk with them and host a meetup in your city or host a meeting online. So I tried to create an app that can help people connect with other people who have same interests as them.
I found out many things from my research and I made things like Empathy map, Persona, Journey map.
I developed two user needs statements one is Broad-focused and another one is Narrow-focused and I developed them with the help of the four W’s and the five whys the final result were these user needs statements:
Broad-focused: [Tony, a university student] wants [to find people with similar interests] to [spend his time with someone he shares his interests with and do something meaningful of their time].
Narrow-focused: [Scott, a university student] wants [to find other students with similar interests] to [form a group and host some things that the whole group can enjoy].
I used two techniques to come up with different design ideas that I can implement and test it on user by creating a prototype. The two methods are: Now-Wow-How matrix and SCAMPER method. The Now-Wow-How matrix is attached below and the SCAMPER method is written below:
Substitute: There are few other apps that almost have the same mechanism but are a little bit different, they are: Discord and 9GAG. 9GAG is used to post content and Discord is used to talk in groups or video chat or audio chat. Both are used for different purposes.
Combine: The apps that I listed above can be combined to form a totally new app in which we can post content and also talk in groups or call or video conference which is good for connecting to people, and there are a few other features of my own which I will be adding in the app.
Adapt: There should have been an app that can do multiple things like the above stuff, but there isn't, so people aren't adapting to the pandemic because they can install both of the apps and do their tasks but they should have adapted and created an app that could have done both the tasks. Therefore, I will be creating a working prototype for that app by the end of the term.
Modify: I will be modifying both of the above-mentioned apps and create a new one by selecting specific features that are really helpful for the students to connect.
Put to another use: As you know that the app will be used to try and connect with people and share some content, it will also be used to monitor a person's health, it will ask the user about any symptoms they felt for COVID and if they have felt any symptom then the app will contact with the health department and then they will come and check for COVID and also the app will ask you to stay at home if you have any symptoms.
Eliminate: I will be eliminating some of the irrelevant features from the above-mentioned apps to make the new app smoother and minimalist.
Reverse: I don't think that reversing this app's build will make any difference.
I developed many sketches and a storyboard to explain my app and its working and reason to create it in the first place which was to enable people to meet other people with similar interests. The sketches are Displayed in the low-fidelity prototype section. The storyboard is displayed below:
I developed a low fidelity prototype and received some feedback on it and modified it and made my first iteration of medium fidelity prototype. My Low-fidelity prototype screens are displayed below. It only had it's navigation working.
I conducted a Wizard of Oz experiment to see if the user can access the post button and found out that the process might take user too long to understand so then I added the option to select group in the “+” button instead of just posting on your timeline and the data collected from the test also stated that the user first pressed “+” button when they were said to post media on a specific group. And the critique received also stated that it took too long to user to get to the group and add a post in the specific group. And then I conducted a Cognitive Walkthrough the results are as follows:
User was successful in performing all the above tasks. But had little difficulty in the starting and pressed some wrong buttons. And the critique received was then evaluated and then I developed a better way to reach the button that can post, conduct voting in a group.
So, here’s the modified “+” button that now can post, conduct voting in any group from homepage, instead of the previous button that could only post on your timeline from the homepage:
I developed three iterations of my medium fidelity prototype first two were in PowerPoint and the final one was in Adobe XD which is the cleanest looking of the bunch. I will attach the home page of my first and second iteration of medium fidelity prototype because adding all the pages from both of the prototype will make this more lengthy and boring. So, here’s my home page of first and second iteration respectively.
