Connecting with New People through Icebreakers
SPARK
KOYA is a virtual gift-giving app that uses geolocation to make memorable and personalized experiences. Users get to send messages at a specific time and place, which makes the experience memorable for the user and the gift receiver.
My Role
UX Researcher | Designer | Prototype
Team
Andre D. Williams, Emily Bonani, Quynh Nguyen
Tools
Figma | Miro | Trello
Initial Problem Statement
Hypothesis
People would like to meet others with common interests, but find it difficult to form intimate connections with less access to an in-person gathering. They don’t feel comfortable reaching out because they are scared of how others might perceive them.
How might we help users feel comfortable meeting others and forming intimate connections?
Research Kickoff
User Interviews:
We started off by conducting fiver user interviews. We asked interviewees specific questions about how they make new friends and the impact COVID has made on their social life.
Insights
Users don’t reach out to people online because they don't know how to start the conversation.
Online interactions are missing the social cues and body language that users would usually get in person.
Users need a mutual point of interest to make initial connections.
Persona
Based on the trends from the user interviews, we crafted our persona, Jordyn. Jordyn Philips, who loves to socialize. However, because of the pandemic, she is unable to connect with her friends. Thus, Jordyn wants to make new friends who have similar interests as her. The only option she has is to meet someone through social media but she does not like meeting people that way because it does not simulate real-life connections.
Jordyn
Goals
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Keep in touch with her larger circle of friends
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Simulate real-life connections online
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Meet people with similar interests
Needs
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A way of introducing herself to meeting new people online
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A way to know her friend's schedules
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To connect with people in a way that simulates real life
Pain Points
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Finds it difficult to schedule meetings with others
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Introductions are awkward when meeting someone new online
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It's difficult to create deep connections with people in a digital space.
Jordyn's Journey Making Connections on Social Media
This shows the emotional journey of our target user, "Jordyn" and how she interacts with other products in her daily life. This journey will help us identify different features for our product to make their experience smooth, efficient, and joyful.
The Situation
Since the pandemic, it has been difficult to meet people in the real world, forcing people to rely on digital tools in order to meet and keep up with friends. However, because online interactions do not emulate the social cues that people get from real-life interactions, it can be difficult to connect with others online. As a result, our persona Jordyn finds it difficult to naturally meet and foster deep connections with people as well as maintain existing relationships in a digital space.
How might we emulate in-person experiences for people of similar interests in order to help Jordyn stay connected and communicate with others?
Potential Features
MOSCOW Map
The MoSCoW Map helps us focus on the features that are necessary for our product. Although there are several features we want to implement, we have to prioritize them. In order to do figure out which features to prioritize, we place the features into each of the quadrants (Must, Should, Could, and Won't), based on their importance.
Insights
User Interests
Match users to others based on their interest.
Live online matches
Match user with someone who is online at that moment.
Connect with friends
Allow users to keep up with their existing friends.
Going Hi-Fidelity
From the design studio, we created a digitized version of our final team sketch into High-Fidelity and prototypes it. This way we can test the prototype and features to improve on that are troubling the users while completing a task.
Effects of the New Design
After making the changes to our product based on the insights from round one of testing. We wanted to test the effects of these new changes and how users would react to them.
Users took less time in completing tasks, indicating that the visuals helped users understand the app.
An increase in easiness rating shows that making changes to the product lessens the users friction points.
11% increase in success rate shows that users were able to complete the task with less friction points.
Future Actions
Based on the multiple iterations and continued improvements between user interviews, we can confidently recommend the continued research and development of this offering.
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Build out another prototype & run a round of usability testing based on our feedback.
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Create a profile, keeping in mind the simplistic values our app holds
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Test a few different options for the ‘Who do you want to meet’ page. User’s didn’t always go directly to the plus button so we feel we could UX this better.