Summary

inVIBE is a mobile application designed to help users organize social meetings and is creating as a part of a student project. Together with my student group, we worked on a product which task is to help in organizing a social event and to select the appropriate form of entertainment based on the user’s mood, emotions, and interests. It also will suggest interesting ideas for various activities, as well as notify about the most interesting events in a given location.

Main features of product

Personalization

Support in choosing the right form of entertainment based on mood, emotions and interests defined by users.

Complexity

Organization of social meetings, choice of place, a proposition of events and communication using one tool.

Communicative

Possibility to plan/organize meetings involving your friends. Share your ideas, suggestions and stay in touch with friends dint of thematic groups and chat.

Involvement

Cooperation during planning/organizing with each meeting participant.

Functionality

Thematic groups, chat, task board, personalization of proposals, creating and searching for events will enable the efficient organization of meetings.

Research

During the pandemic, most people had limited contact with others, so we decided to conduct research and learn more about how people spend time with friends both during and before a pandemic. 

  • Research started from creating a Google Form questionary and sending it out to our friends and published it on our profiles on Facebook and also on various groups that brought together young people like students group from our university.  

  • We selected a target group with whom we carried out online in-depth interviews and also, we extracted a group of people on the basis of which we created our main persona.

They are ambitious young people who regularly meet friends and like spending time actively. They are into taking on new challenges and easily establish contact with other people. They enjoy going to the cinema, theatre, concert or restaurant.

Problem defining

Research showed that people rarely using other products to organize meetings. Mainly they are using Messenger and Facebook. It is the biggest competition to inVIBE but there is no factor that would be based on the emotions and mood of the users. We want to change this and make the entertainment selection process more personalized. Nobody wants after all get notifications about metal concert if listening to pop music and vice versa. 

Persona / Journey map

The results of the user needs research allowed us to define the main persona. Anna is a professionally and socially active person who loves to have everything planned. She likes to get the most out of life, and meeting friends gives her the most joy. 

MVP

After in-depth analysis, we defined some major use scenarios that we would like to focus on first.

We defined:

  • Registration
  • Choice of entertainment from the proposed options
  • Reacting to an event created by another user
  • Create a new custom event
  • Cooperation with premises

Registration, i.e. the first contact with the application was the most important process for us because then, the user decides if the application will meet expectations and whether the tool is needed.

User scenario: Registration

I was responsible for creating a usage scenario, flows and wireframes for the registration process. When creating the scenario, I’ve tried to spot the most important points that should be passed during the first contact and what could affect the first impression of the app. I’ve resigned from the request to create an account or log in at the first contact. I’ve wanted to let the user get to know the application and its most important functions without having to enter any data. Logging in or creating a new account is the way to extend the possibility of using the application. I’ve also focused on the „tutorial”, which familiarized the user with inVIBE for the first time. In the scenario, I’ve also included the process of creating own network of friends in the application and importing contacts from phone or other available sources such as Facebook. It will make it possible to inform friends about the new social meetings planner and download your own version of the application.

In the first phase, the application is to help the user in:

  • Personalization of proposal:
    The first thing an inVibe user will do is define their preferences for socializing and what they usually want to do. This will help the application to propose appropriate events in the future that will be tailored to the interests and mood of the application user.
  • Create events
    The user will be able to create their own events. Scheduling an appointment, inviting friends, choosing a place and editing a given meeting will help in matching the needs of both the user and his friends. Each of the invited people will be able to moderate them and join the organization process.
  • Building a community
    Adding people to your community in the application with whom the user will be able to create thematic „rooms”. Chat and polls will be available in each room to discuss a specific meeting.

In the next stages are planned introduce a system that will encourage individual users to use the application by:

  • Benefits
    System of available discount codes/coupons to be used in premises where the user makes a reservation a place or plans to appear, selected from the application level.

Prototyping and design

I was responsible for the final version of the prototype made in Axure RP 9 and creating most of the interfaces and interactions. It was my first contact with this kind of task but during work on the prototype and learning more about the Axure tool it became more and more engaging and enjoyable for me. Below you can see some examples of interfaces I created.

Usability tests

DESCRIPTION AND GOALS

This stage was very important in the whole design process. Usability tests allowed drew many conclusions for further development of the application. Results showed that not all functionalities are useful, and several solutions are not obvious though for me they are. Several months of hard work have faced constructive criticism and it was very informative.

GOALS

  • Verification architecture of information and logical operation of the application.
  • Checking functionality of the application.
  • Intuitiveness of navigating through the application.
  • Selecting the most and least useful application functions.

METHODOLOGY

In this stage we used task-oriented tests on a clickable prototype made in Axure RP 9. Interviews have been conducted and recorded via Google Meet. Respondents have completed tasks on their smartphones. One moderator and one observer were present during the test. Basing on notes made during the tests analysis of the results have been carried out.

RESPONDENTS

Our target group were adults who regularly meet friends and were fluent in mobile applications and were willing to discover new types of entertainment, and at the same time want to improve their communication with friends by organizing various forms of entertainment. The research has been conducted among a group of 10 people, who used mainly the Android system, but finally, we didn’t rule out people who used the iOS system.

SCALE OF PROBLEM

The observed problems have been assessed due to their importance in the process of task implementation. The ability of self-completing the task, emotions which accompanied while making it and the frequency of accruing problems were taken into consideration while assessing/evaluating the importance of the problem. Each problem has been analyzed and then the appropriate one has been selected recommendation

  • Critical problem:

It needs immediate improvement as it prevents the task from being completed. It can also cause negative emotions and frustration.

  • Important problem:

It negatively affects the performance of the task. The accumulation of such problems may prevent respondents from achieving your goal.

  • Small:

Most of the users deal with it efficiently. The problem does not significantly affect their experience, but improving it speeds up and increases the smoothness of using the product.

All identified problems have been solved and the changes have been implemented in the prototype.

That’s all for now. Thank you for your time! 🙂