A mobile app that lets users plan and find events customized to their preferences and COVID-19 history
Project Finalist – Cal Poly SLO’s UX Fest SLO
Overview
HappyMeet was created during a Cal Poly SLO's UX Fest SLO. Teams were given a week to develop a mobile or web application that aimed to help the world as it slowly entered a post-COVID era.
During our first discussion, my team and I briefly talked about how we were doing during the pandemic. Between the three of us, we all had varying levels of comfortability with going outside. From this discussion, we realized we were not alone. Everyone has their own comfortability level, and sometimes, it's difficult to voice those concerns to friends, family, and your peers.
Thus, we decided to create HappyMeet, a mobile app that lets users plan and find events customized to their preferences and COVID-19 history.
User Research
During our first discussion, my team and I struggled to find what people would look forward to in a post-COVID world. In fact, we realized that there were many possibilities that we could choose from!
To get a better understanding of the most popular possibilities, we sent out a survey to our peers that asked them: “What are you most looking forward to post-COVID?”.
In total, we were able to get 75 responses. We found that many individuals looked forward to hanging out with friends and family but were also concerned about the safety of doing so.
After coming up with our how might we statement, we developed an empathy map to better understand our users. Specifically, our empathy map is for Anna Le, a 19 year old Psychology major at UC Davis. Anna's goal is to hang out with her friends once the pandemic is over.
Ideation
Once we understood our users, my team and I moved on to a brainstorming session where we listed out the various features HappyMeet would include. We then adapted our list to include the specific pages each feature would be on to build our app's overall structure.
With a clear understanding of HappyMeet's features, we then individually created low fidelity wireframes of how we envisioned HappyMeet. Due to the time constraints, my team divided the work. I was in-charge of creating wireframes for the onboarding process, home page, and the discover page (event search).
Once our low-fidelity wireframes were complete, we all came together to create a quick design system for the entire app. For HappyMeet, we wanted to give it an energetic and welcoming environment for our users. To go with these feelings, we chose to use a bright yellow color and a shade of purple as a complimentary color.
With our design system in place, my team and I began to create our high-fidelity wireframes. During this period, I was also in-charge of the onboarding process, the home page, and the discover page.
Working on HappyMeet, and participating in the UX SLO Fest, was different then the previous designathons I had been in. The biggest difference, was that this designathon took place over the span of one whole week. Designathons I previously participated in took place in 48-hour timeframes. This change took my team aback and we underestimated the time that we had for our project. This challenge taught me the importance of creating deadlines for the team over longer periods of time.
During this designathon, I was heavily involved in the user interface portion of our wireframes. This larger role allowed me to hone in on my design skills and practice new techniques such as creating scrollable frames in Figma.
Usability Testing: If my team had more time to work on HappyMeet, our next step would be to focus on usability testing. By conducting this testing, we would be able to analyze how useful our product would be for our target audience.
Emphasizing Accessibility: During this project, my team and I realized that working with bright colors like yellow can be difficult. We used yellow to promote a welcoming and energetic environment to our product. However, we realized that the yellows we used made accessibility difficult. With more time, my team would have had the opportunity to explore how accessible our app is entirely from colors to the sizing of our buttons.