Independent Personal Project | Product & UI/UX Design
A mobile app designed to help young adults find community and friendship post-grad.
Read more below
The Problem
After graduating from USC, I had naively imagined a socially rich young professional life. But after about three months of living deep in the San Fernando Valley (or as I liked to call it, the boonies) I realized that I had taken my vibrant school social life for granted.
Location, schedules, and just plain ol’ life all presented themselves as obstacles to maintaining my friendships, and making new friends felt impossible.
I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. Maybe it was recency bias, but I was seeing copious amounts of “how do I make new friends as an adult?” posts on r/askreddit, tiktoks of people asking that same question, and their comment sections coming to the same unfortunate conclusion I did: you don’t.
This led to me asking the question:
“How might we help young adults cultivate new friendships after leaving the structure of a school environment?”
Research
User Interviews
Making friends as an adult is difficult, you can no longer just make friends of convenience, and with time and energy being a little more precious, the expectations you have for a friendship change. Navigating this change is something many people struggle with when they leave the structure of school and enter a new chapter in their lives.
My objective was to discover:
- What situations are most conducive to making new friends?
- What roadblocks currently prevent people from obtaining the social life they want?
For this I interviewed 5 recent college grads; ranging from less than a year to 2+ years out from school.
From the insights I gathered from the interviews, I noticed 2 separate obstacles for why people were unsatisfied with their current social life.
One issue being
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physical limitations of distance and finances
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feeling overwhelmed
- feeling disconnected from friends
This led me to reframe my HMW statements to more specifically address these new revelations.
How might we help a user build friendships that are cognisant of their life’s limitations?
- How might we help Ollie maintain old friends to help him feel more in control of his social life?
- How might we encourage Ollie to take charge of building new friendships that match his evolved interests and energy?
- How might we help Maribel build current and new friendships in person in a way that doesn’t depend on spending money or extensive transportation?
- How might we help connect Maribel to people who are in the same stage of life as her to ease her fears of missing out?
Design
Wireflows (Pencil Sketch to Lo-Fi)
Style Guide
Check out the slideshow to see the various design and illustrative elements that makeup Coven. Speaking of- wondering what possessed me (haha! no pun intended) to name Coven, Coven? Merriam-Webster’s two definitions of the word:
- “a group of witches that meet regularly”
- “a collection of individuals with similar interests or activities”
Logo
A witch’s familiar, conventionally portrayed as either a cat or a crow, is seen as her loyal and helpful companion. Depending on how you orient the logo, you will see one or the other (which one did you spot first?). Where you’re located plays a big part in who your friends are, so I placed the location marker symbol in the familiar’s eye.
Icons
Created a custom small-scale iconography system.
Color
The palette was loosely inspired by the colors of Halloween, arguably Gen-Z’s favorite holiday. I wanted my colors to be either secondary or primary so that they would stand out boldly against each other within the app.
Illustration
While I want Coven to be inclusive to all ages and genders, my target audience is young women. This is reflected in the cute and simple illustrative style I worked in. A big difference between Coven and other friend-making apps is that real-life photos come second on the user’s profile. I don’t want appearance to be the main decision in whether or not you would be compatible as friends. So instead of expressing themselves, there is a custom avatar designing system on your profile page!
Results
User Interviews (round 2!)
To test the usability of my design, I asked 5 new users to complete 4 key tasks.
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Task 1 (Sign up using phone #)
✅ 5/5 of users completed successfully
- Task 2 (Change profile picture background to “Salmon” color)
❌ 3/5 of users completed successfully
- Task 3 (Add a friend)
❌ 4/5 of users completed successfully
- Task 4 (Check schedule for a created event)
- Overwhelmingly positive response on the appeal of the illustration style
- Many users appreciated the ability to view user’s schedule and availability
- Several users loved that the design was in “dark mode”
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The purpose of the color palette on the edit profile page was confusing to some users.
- Activity status text was too small for some users to see
- Confusion between the difference of the add event tab and the schedule tab
- Concerns about being able to verify user identities before feeling comfortable enough to meet up
Hi-Fi Prototype
Click through this interactive prototype and explore Coven!
If I had more time these are a few items that I would like to continue to work on in Coven.
- Build out the avatar customization feature
- Conduct more user research on online safety. In UX interviews, the map has been a source of both appreciation and skepticism. I’d like to see if I can figure out a solution to move to more of a middle ground that considers both privacy concerns and convenience.
- Explore potential revenue opportunities (ie: illustrative merchandise, targeted business ads that tie in the recommendation feature...etc)
© Anna Hemsworth 2024