Together: A mobile application case study

Research

Findings, Surveys and User Interviews

Questions for surveys and interviews cover broad topics, which then narrow down to more specific questions to get a deeper understanding of the user. Users took part in a set of behavioural tasks, the results were insights into their methods of discovering and sharing.

Topics and tasks include:

What tools were they using to discover events and activities?
How were users sharing content?
Who were users sharing content with?
How would users organise an outing with closest friends on a weekend?

Key take aways extracted from 8 surveys and 2 user interviews.

Curated city guides such as Time Out, Broadsheet and Concrete Playground were the favourite go to sources when searching for things to do
Applications like Yelp and Tripadvisor were rated as the least favourite go to source
Users were more likely to ask friends and family for advice on activities than consult an app. They found they were more satisfied with suggestions from people they trust
Users stated they did not trust the advice from applications such as Tripadvisor and Yelp
Through interviews, users found discovery applications have a high learning curve. They found messaging apps as the more convenient sharing method
Users mentioned that the comments left on places in Foursquare were either unnoteworthy or attempts to promote the business through black hat techniques

User Personas and Problem Statements

Three user personas were created from the results of the surveys and interviews. When formulating the personas, I focused on the user's behavioural traits and the pain points they've encountered when using existing applications.

The personas represented a core user base. It had an integral role in governing future design decisions such as features, content, user flows and workflows.

Information Architecture

The purpose of information architecture is to help users understand where they are, what they've found, what's around and what to expect.

Once features and content were determined they were categorised through a card sort. This was undertaken by 2 participants, who were given a brief explanation of what the mobile application was. The users were asked to group features and content that they would expect to be see in sections of an application.

Key takeaways from this task include:

Notifications was grouped under the profile page, as it details messages pertaining to the user.
The task of adding friends went under both the Newsfeed section and the User Profile section.

User Goals and User Flow

The objective of this exercise was to take the user goals and visualise the process through a user flow. User tasks were broken down and illustrated using objects to indicate steps taken to complete process. The process was revised multiple times to account for edge cases and error handling. Tools used to develop the user flows include the humble pen and paper and Axure.

Sketches and Wireframes

The following diagrams illustrate the progress from initial ideas and sketches to the wireframes.

The process undertaken to produce Together was to start with smaller objects, and work from the ground up to build the environment. This ensured that each element was identifiable and consistent within it's context.

Protoype

Illustrating how the application would work in real life situations was a difficult challenge, in particular the Meetups feature. The design process was split into 2 tasks; devise scenarios where the user is and is not an administrator, and implementing a logical workflow for users to understand the context.

The solution was to develop a wireframe and workflow for the task, to illustrate how a user would see elements in the screen when their roles would vary. Using simple indicators such as profile image positioning would allow a user to recognise who was talking. Hiding and displaying elements such as an accept button would show who was sharing an event. Once these elements were established, adding the compositions to the prototypes was a simple process.

Two protoypes were produced, the first built with Axure was the result of a rapid prototyping session held in class. Prototype V1 mapped out the applications layout and workflow using findings from information architecture, user flows and wireframe exercises.

In my final prototype, I added visuals and design to illustrate a real life example of the application. The prototype was built with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InVision App, a free cloud based prototyping tool.

View Prototype V2

Results

The challenge I set for Together was to find an alternative solution to existing discovery applications. Through the friend activity, Together creates a personalised newsfeed of events. It is inconclusive as to whether it solves the issue of how people can search for activities they're interested in. Further usability testing and feature implementation would help this case.

Meetups was a feature implemented from a business perspective as a solution to provide users with content from friend's conversation. The event share design pattern received positive feedback from users. Comments include "a feature like this should be implemented in existing chat applications" and "I could see myself using this".