Everlaw Design Challenge
Intro
I received this design challenge as a part of my UX application for Everlaw. I was asked to design a digital platform to support seniors to connect with others to form meaningful relationships. I was challenged to complete this design challenge in less than 5 hours showcasing my UX process and design capabilities. I decided to create an iOS app to help seniors schedule group event and connect with others easily.
Prompt:
Many seniors in today’s society face loneliness and social isolation. Design a platform that helps seniors connect with other individuals to form meaningful relationships.
How might we design a platform to help seniors connect with other individuals by scheduling a group event?
Time constraint: 5 hours
Deliverable: wireframe, high-fi mockups, sketches
Process
The following is a normal UX design process when I work on a design task. Given the very limited period of time, I decided to skip some of the steps in preliminary research part and focus more on the final high-fidelity delivery, trying to stick to the process as closely as I could.
Hour 0.5: User Research (goals, user case, scenario walkthrough)
Hour 0.5: Competitive Research (similar apps, user reviews)
Hour 2–4: Ideate, wireframe & prototype
Hour 5: Mockup & writeup
Understanding Target User
Many seniors in today’s society face loneliness and social isolation. They like to engage in activities but they are unable to find right partner and they do not know how to find. My design focus thus is to help seniors schedule group event and connect with others easily to form meaningful relationships.
Target User:
Seniors who live alone and would like to search for interesting events nearby to add fun to their lives
User Goals:
- Have a quick way to browse through the events nearby
- Search for a specific event of interest
- Join an interesting upcoming event nearby
- Create an event and invite others to join
- Be able to connect with new friends in group chat
User Cases:
- search for events nearby
- schedule an event on the app
- chat with partners to check details such as time, place to meet, ticket order, etc.
Competitive Analysis
It’s important to acknowledge the competitor apps and try to learn what their biggest problems are, so that I can come up with a solution to those problems and users would prefer to use this MVP product instead of the competitors. Here are the top 3 competitors that have the most downloads and best ratings in social & event schedule category:
Facebook: 553K ratings | 3.0 stars
Eventbrite: 304K ratings | 4.9 stars
Meetup: 48K ratings | 4.7 stars
I have gained a lot of information about the biggest flaws in the current apps by reading reviews from their users and list the main issues below:
Main issues (findings from competitor research)
- Tough to socialize with strangers
- Recommend user with uninterested events
- Inaccurate location mapping
- No follow up for registered events
- More focused on young people without considering the accessibility for seniors
Design Brief
Based on the research findings, I would like to create a mobile application with convenient functionality and elder-friendly design to help user find new friends and engage in more interesting activities.
key focus:
- schedule/join a group activity
- maintain/foster social relationship
Scenario Walkthrough
Existing Scenario:
Grandma Marie is a former housewife who lost her husband 3 years ago because of cancer. She has one daughter who is married and two grandchildren. She is currently living in old-age home and often feels lonely especially when there is no one else around her.
Marie got bored one day and would like to go to concert to enjoy a great night. She would like to ask her friends to go together but was hesitating to make a phone call. She felt finding her friends’ phone number and asking one by one was very troublesome and would like to give up the concert plan.
Proposed Scenario:
Grandma Marie was planning to enjoy a concert with some partners. She visited the mobile application and found the related event proposal by searching online. She soon joined the concert going group and discussed in the chat group about how to reach the destination, how to buy tickets, etc. They went to the concert together happily in the end.
Ideation
User Flow
Moving towards finalizing the task for users and understanding user flow.
- Onboarding flow
- Search Event
- Create Event
- Group Communication
- Setting
Wireframes
- Onboarding
2. Search Events
3. Create Events
Prototype
mockup link: https://vimeo.com/476760171
- Onboarding
Users can walk through the app key features and get onboard quickly
2. Sign in & Home Screen
Users can sign in and view the events nearby and upcoming events of interest
3. Search an Event
Users can filter the event category, time and place to get the most interested event to go
4. Join Event Chat
Users can choose to join the group event automatically set by the app system and get social connections
5. Create an Event
If users cannot find the event or they have an ongoing plan already, they can simply click create in the navigation bar to create new event info and share it within their social community group
User Testing & Iteration
I’ve performed 5 user tests with simple mockups to validate the main functions of the app. I received meaningful feedback on some use cases that I haven’t displayed in the wireframes. These are some of the main ones:
No feedback after sharing events
Users are not sure where to navigate after sharing events to social media. In addition, they also hope to be able to share this within the community group as well.
Not sure about the approving waiting time
After clicking “attend the event”, the waiting time to be approved remained uncertain for users. They don’t know how to react or how to leave comments to get quickly approved.
Data security concern
Some users also share their concerns about attending group activities especially they don’t know a single member in the group. How to ensure the safety of these events would be a may concern to increase user retention rate.
Reflection
Five-hour design challenge was really crazy for me to handle so many stuff, but I still had a lot of fun in the design process.
Due to the limited time, I was not able to get to the little details of the design and create all of the screens like “group”, “community”, “setting” etc., but I was able to validate the main functionality by performing 5 user tests. What can be involved in future plan is to get access to the senior users for usability testing so that I can get a better understanding of their needs and pain points.
