This past fall me and two other designers decided to come
up with a solution to UCSD’s lack of social aptitude. We felt
that there simply wasn’t enough ways for students to meet
each other, especially on such a large campus. We gave
ourselves 8 weeks to fully design an app that could tackle
this issue.
My Role
User Researcher Designer Data Analyst
Design Process
EMPATHIZE
Interviews & Shadowing
We began interviewing our friends and peers about the lacking social
quality found on this campus. From this we found that there just were
not many ways students can meet each other. A weak Greek Life and
non-existant sports culture were among several reasons for this.
Many students expressed how it’s also hard to strike up conversation
with peers if there isn’t a common thread to connect them.
We noticed that almost all students mentioned that throughout the
week they would go exercise at the school gym at least once, although
they would typically go alone.
DEFINE
Pain Points
It’s hard to meet new people because many are already situated in
cliques, and are unwilling to mingle without some common thread.
There aren’t many opportunities to meet people such as football
games, parties, or club socials.
A lot of students are busy with coursework or a job and can’t make it
to the limited number of socials on campus.
Personas
John Lu
Active in his fraternity, but wants to expand his social circle.
Struggles to go out to socials because school takes up too much of his time.
Feels shunned when trying to talk to new people.
Amanda Kerning
Tried to join organizations on campus, but was either rejected or felt that it wasn't
what she was looking for.
Her part time job makes it hard for her to make time to socialize and meet new people.
A social butterfly but feels she doesn't have the opportunity to show that side of herself
Objective
What we needed was to create a way for students to
easily interact with each other through some commonality to
combat the awkwardness many students feel when trying to
make friends.
IDEATE
Our Solution
After diverging and converging past many ideas, we decided to use
exercising as the gateway for people to meet each other since most
students had time to workout a couple times a week.
We decided to create FitFam, a way for students to interact by
exercising and achieving their fitness goals.
Task Flow
We came up with some storyboards to give us an idea of how and
when users would use our app, then used that to create a task flow
Lo-Fi Sketches & Wires
Based off of the pain points and personas we sketched out some
options to test. Our goal was creating an enjoyable user experience
that welcomes all students.
PROTOTYPE & TESTING
Mid-Fi Prototype
Moving forward we converted our sketches into a workable prototype
in Adobe XD. Below are a couple key features.
Testing Iterations
We ran a heuristic evaluation based off of Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics.
Based off of our findings we tweaked the sections that user’s had the most
issues with.
We then ran A/B Tests to confirm our redesign was an improvement.
We repeated this process until we were satisfied with our results
which can be seen below
Hi-Fi Prototype
Our final design focused on integrating a beautiful design with ease of use.
Users should easily be able to figure out how to use the app and start
connecting with other students.
Clickable Prototype
Conclusion
This was an amazing project to undertake because I felt that it taught me a lot about
what it takes to be a designer. This was one of the first few large projects I’ve ever done,
so much of this was a new experience for me. I learned a lot about core design concepts,
as well as strengthening my skills with software. I had a lot of fun watching this app go
from just a couple sticky notes on a white board to what it is now.
