Meet.me

Meet.me is a connection app that allows people to create and nurture lasting relationships.

With the onset of COVID-19 it has become increasingly difficult for people to make true connections with others. meet.me is a solution that allows people to engage with new people from around the world, as well as friends and family that they want to keep in touch with. Through meet.me, we are able to create and join activities that help us build better relationships.

Practices

Experience design, User Research

Methods & Tools

UX design methodologies, Figma, Miro

Role

UX designer, User researcher

Date

Dec 2020

USERS & AUDIENCE

Meet.me is designed for 30 year old product designer, Ala. She is an outgoing, socially conscious, educated woman in a committed relationship that is genuinely interested in connecting with new people as well as strengthening her relationship with her family.

SCOPE & CONSTRAINTS

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, throughout this project our team worked remotely with each other as well as our users. It was a two-day sprint, and we were only tasked with building one user flow to test with the users.

As part of the team, I conducted research through user interviews, brainstorming and the creation of a user persona. In this team, I also utilized my storyboarding and wireframing skills.

USER INTERVIEW SYNTHESIS & TAKEAWAYS

While analyzing our findings from our user interviews, we identified some key similarities and items of note:

1. New people versus existing relationships

2. Daytime versus evening activities/certain times for certain activites (see interview 3)

3. Active/exciting activities

4. Chill activities like restaurants or movie watching

5. Curation/logistics are a barrier to COVID socializing

6. Safety - do you really knonw them if you only interact virtually

7. Safety - COVID safety concerns

People are looking to be socially occupied, especially during COVID. Interviewee #2 and #3 both defaulted to their current experiences and social circles. While interviewee #1, although she is married, focused on meeting new people.

From this information we began to pull out information from our interviews that could help narrow down and solidify what type of product could answer the true need for connecting during COVID-19.

During this process we pulled out different categories of topics and points discussed in each of the interviews. Each interview is noted in a different color, but it is clear that in most cases each interviewee encountered similar problems when trying to connect with others during the pandemic.

USER PERSONA

With this data, my team and I composed a user persona that combined all of the key aspects that we derived from our three user interviews.

Ala is a 30-year-old female product designer and is in a committed relationship. She is outgoing, extroverted and socially conscious. She loves to socialize in hopes of meeting new people as well as staying connected with her existing relationships. Ala hopes to find a product that helps her do these things while meeting health, physical and emotional safety concerns as well as tackling the loneliness she is feeling from being isolated during the pandemic..

HOW MIGHT WE

At this point, we began brainstorming questions that would better understand and explain Ala’s primary goals as someone who is looking for connection during the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. How might we create safe COVID socializing that uses special interest activities to foster new genuine connections that can last beyond COVID times?

2. How might we make planning online socializing less stressful?

3. How might we make COVID socializing like a game (gamificaiton)?

4. How might we make COVID socializing activity or special interest driven (instead of people driven)?

5. How might we make socializing during COVID relate to solving a social issue (understanding people of different race/class/religion/political belief/country, or somehow raising awareness or funds for an issue)?

6. How might we make socializing during COVID better than pre-COVID (unique/distinct in a positive or special way)?

7. How might we assist in planning in-person socializing that complies with safety protocols and while keeping it engaging?

8. How might we assist in planning online socializing that cultivates a genuine connection?

Throughout this brainstorming we kept Ala’s persona in mind and endeavored to see through her eyes. To do this, we began to distill our findings of Ala and the problems she is facing.

In the end, we solidified our question to be:.

How might we assist in planning social interactions that comply with safety protocols, are engaging (activity oriented and shared experience focused) and cultivate a genuine connection?

HYPOTHESIS

Through this distillation of Ala and her pain points as a person trying to create true connections we arrived at a hypothesis for our product.

We believe that by creating a social platform with features to connect with other users and invite non-users, while allowing dynamic browsing of activities by interests, COVID safety preferences and, we will help people combat loneliness and boredom.

We will know this to be true with survey responses confirming satisfying social interactions, rates of repeat use, rates of new people interactions and external invites to existing relationships outside of the platform.

USER FLOW

At this point we believed that it was time for us to begin building some of the user flows for our product. We believe that the key to our product is the ability for the user to create their own activities which they can post and let others join in that activity, or they can join an activity that someone else has posted.

To begin with, we wanted to start from the very beginning – how would someone interact with our product to create an activity. For the purposes of this user flow, we proceeded with a returning user scenario.

WIREFRAMING

Now that we had a viable user flow, we tasked ourselves with creating a set of wireframes. As per our user flow, we have a Login, Activity Feed, Create Activity and Activity Detail pages.

PROTOTYPING

Using these wireframes, we created a prototype for user testing. When we tested this prototype with a group of users, we tasked them with figuring out how to create a new activity.

When the users attempted to do this, it was very well received. Most found it easy to do and had no issues proceeding with the task. Some of the feedback we received was that the activity page was too crowded and that they loved the idea that they could choose to either find an existing activity or create their own.

OUTCOMES

One of the things that I learned from this project that I will definitely carry through is the fact that there will always be differing opinions on how to tackle a project. The important thing is to give stage to all parties and come to a consensus only after hearing all viewpoints.

I’ve also been grateful to have a better understanding of the fact that you can’t make assumptions about your users. We went into this project with that, based on the project brief, that this product would revolve around dating. However, through our user interviews we learned that most people were interested in making a connection – not just a romantic connection.