Pearpals Case Study
PROJECT TYPE: End-to-End MVP
MY ROLE:
UX Researcher, UI/UX designer, UX writer, Graphic Logo Designer
PROJECT TIMELINE:
2-3 Weeks
PROJECT SUMMARY
The Problem:
There are a lot of various socializing apps, but there aren’t many that link local events and socializing. I always struggle with finding things to do on the weekends and making new friends post-college, which made me wonder: what if there was a way we could connect local events with long-lasting methods of building friendships?
The Solution:
Create a mobile app that helps users discover local events based on their location with a feature that “Pears” them (based on listed profile interests) to other users who have similar interests. Users have a choice of striking up a conversation with their Pears and plan a meetup at the mutual event.
PROJECT DETAILS
EMPATHIZE
Do any current competitors have a solution to this potential problem yet?
Competitive Analysis
To understand more about existing platforms, I conducted a brief research analysis highlighting strengths and weaknesses of each platform to better understand potential features for my design.
Key Takeaways:
Not many competitors provided a socializing aspect to encourage new connections and friendships.
Needed a round of user interviews to better define the actual gap between events and making new friends.
What struggles do people have when making friends?
User Interviews
After listening to participants, I gathered many insights and narrowed them into these main categories to better understand the problem users had with finding events and new friends.
Major Pain points:
Those who struggle with making new friends post-college find it hard to meet people who are genuine
Some find it hard to make friends due to lack of consistency and follow-ups from initial meetup
Some personality types don’t like to talk to strangers, but are open to it if the environment is right
After discovering the main painpoints from research participants, I summarized the info into an user persona to help centralize my design process.
Who is my target audience?
User Persona
From this persona, I was able to visualize major paint points for the potential user group in a clear way. For the design solutions, I focused on solving issues such as struggles in making friends at local events.
DEFINE
MAIN PROBLEM STATEMENT
Users want to find local activities around their area to attend with friends, but struggle with knowing what special events are happening and making friends at these events.
Proposed Solutions:
If our research showed that users who want to find local activities prefer to have an easy-to-use platform that offers a wide variety of communication features, we could break down the design into a few areas
Help by creating a platform that allow users to join/create groups that are tailored to certain interests
Help by creating a platform that lists local events (small and big) based on the user's personal location.
Help by creating a feature that allows users to connect with other users attending the same event(s)
How Might We:
…allow users to discover local events around their area based on time and interests?
…allow individuals or groups to match together prior to the event and result in long-lasting friendships?
DESIGN IDEAS
Task and User Flows
What paths could the user take to find a solution to these problems?
To prevent myself from getting lost with all the possible potential features, I created main task flows and users flows to help focus the amount of pages needed for the initial project.
Before I jumped straight into sketching, I thought…
The group chat feature may be a good solution, but needs more research before presenting full feature
The search page could be designed in many ways so that users have a refined browsing process
Users could potentially never use the “Pearing” feature if it is too hidden within the pages
How can I combine similar features from competitors into a new concept?
Sketches
Taking the task and user flows, I sketched various potential solutions to help solve the main issues of finding local events and building friendships through those events.
Wireframes
How can I iterate on these sketches based on feedback?
After sketching, I continued to clean up the flow of the features through lo-fi wireframe designs based on feedback that was given from stakeholders.
Using components, I quickly explored the flow of different feature functions for the final product.
After many iterations, I finalized my solution into 4 main features:
Problem #1:
How can users find events in their local area?
Solution #1:
Homepage that populates events based on user location
Problem #2:
How can users access all the necessary event information all at once?
Solution #2:
Easy to access CTA that provides link to events that require tickets
Problem #3:
How can users make friends with similar interests within the pool of attendees?
Solution #3:
“Pear Me” feature that pairs users based on profile interests and personality type
Problem #4:
How can users strike up a conversation with their matches prior to the event?
Solution #4:
Chat feature to help build a friendship prior to the event
Branding and Logo Design
Some keywords for my app were fun, cute, and energizing. I wanted to keep the palette to be relatively gender neutral but have a strong contrast. After much exploration, I ended up with this bright purple and energizing chartreuse green as the main colors for the design.
At first, I wrote down key words that reminded me of friendship and events. My original idea was called “Friendzy” but after exploring the logos further, I realized I wanted to go back to the drawing board.
As I continued to design, I knew I wanted the app to be fun and cute. I love puns, so I explored the idea of pairs being “Pears”. To avoid the misunderstanding that “Pears” would be a dating app, I created “PearPals” and used a neutral friendly palette of colors to communicate to users the intention of the app.
TESTING & ITERATIONS
Usability Testing
Where do users get stuck when using these new features?
Even if the initial idea of the app was logical, I had to test the idea out with potential users to see if my solutions were even necessary and useful in solving the problem at hand.
Through testing with a small handful of participants, I gathered the major pain points from my initial design:
80% of participants thought homepage captions were too vague
80% of participants preferred to use the homepage instead of the search bar to browse
40% of participants were confused by the purpose of “Pear Me” feature
60% of participants found the placement of the group chat to be odd
60% of participants weren’t confident with the functionality of the floating “going” button
PRIORITY ITERATIONS
Although there were many positive comments about the app, the major struggles from the usability test needed to be fixed in order for the MVP to have a smooth comprehensive flow.
Home + Search Bar (Home Page)
Explore the “Pear Me” feature more through testing, and create a space for the feature on the nav bar for easier access
Allow users to browse events via interactive map
Potential Next Steps:
Eliminating the Group Chat CTA (Profile Page)
Do more research on the group chat feature to ensure a smooth and error free flow for users
Incorporate onboarding flows to better explain the purpose of special features like Myers-Briggs information on profile
Potential Next Steps:
Rearranging the “Going” CTA (Events Details Page)
Add a friends list for users to view which friends are going to the event
Have more native interactions, such as “add to calendar”
Potential Next Steps:
FINAL PRODUCT
NEXT STEPS
IF I HAD MORE TIME…
Build onboarding screens that explain the profile information (purpose of Myers-brigss in helping to find individuals with similar personalities)
Explore other features like interactive maps, event meet-up confirmation & security, friend’s list, swipe matching function to help users discover other events by random
Build out a more detailed prototype for further usability testing and feedback
Execute live A/B testing to discover what features work best
PROJECT REFLECTION:
This project helped me to understand the importance of making clear and purposeful design decisions. With an end-to-end original project, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the design possibilites. However, I learned to stick to the timeline and always back my decisions through research findings to provide a strong initial MVP.
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