Project 1 Retrospective
My first project as a UX design student
By Mark Donica
Assignment
For my first project as a UX design student, we were assigned a partner and tasked to conduct research to understand what makes them tick. Based on the data collected, design an app that would help simplify some aspect of their life.
Tools
Rapid prototyping techniques using only a pen and paper
Duration
3 days
The Problem
My partner has a background in the service industry but big life events like getting married and having a child has changed his priorities. He loves going out and having fun with his family and colleagues but feels like most of the events suggested to him by social media are too centered around heavy alcohol use. Anthony wants to easily find fun events for friends, family, and networking that aren’t just geared towards the bar scene and late night shows.
The Solution
Create an app that finds events for users that complement their evolving lifestyles. Events are curated based on their weekly schedule and ranked from wild to chill. Events are aggregated from other social media sites or created and shared between users, then narrowed down and targeted specifically to match user’s changing needs.

User research
I gathered information about my partner’s daily activities, habits, and pain points through a user interview. I began by asking general life questions and then progressed to more open-ended questions, getting to the bigger picture.
He used to work in the service industry in Austin’s booming bar and restaurant scene. Since then, however, he got married and had a child, and began a more serious professional career in tech. He still wants to be social, but the bar scene is too wild for his current, more grown-up lifestyle.

Synthesize Data
I used affinity mapping to organize the data points, grouping specific notes from the interview into 4 different categories and hoping to see the data from a new, broader perspective. I wanted to see what higher-level concepts might appear.

Competitive Analysis
During the interview, my partner discussed the drawbacks of his current apps. Facebook’s event net is too broad, sending him too many heavy drinking related events suggested by his friends who are still in older habits. Instagram doesn’t really help because there is no planning component. You see the post after the fact and people often paint a misleading picture of what is going on anyway. Do 512 and meetup.com are great resources but there is no social networking or location integration with your phone. They are big, clunky sites. He wants something fast, simple, and fun to use.
Sketching
I started sketching it out with pencil and paper. It was dirty and time consuming. I obliterated the eraser on my pencil pretty quickly iterating through many ideas. Here are some of the main screens that began to form.

My partner loved the sketches so it was time to sketch the final prototype.
Search Criteria
This screen is crucial to the app. It is the filter that curates your events. You can set multiple filters for weekdays or weekends. This app is geared towards people who work normal business hours like 9–5, Monday-Friday. You can also select the general time of day (morning, afternoon or evening) and energy level. Energy levels go from chill, engaging to wild. This is the first screen you would configure when opening the app for the first time.
Menu
Nav to the other pages using the hamburger menu. (More about this in the enhancements section.)

Events
The main events screen will show all of the events that meet your criteria. It would be great if the bulk of these events could be scraped from as many sources on the web as possible. If you tap GO! they will appear on your Radar page.
Radar
The filled in circle represents that someone in your network is currently there. This could be populated by sharing the phones location data. The “!” icon shows they are excited about the event. (More about this in the enhancements section.)

Network
The network page lists your connections and shows you what is on their radar as well.
Event Creation
Create a new event for your network. The goal here was to keep things as simple as possible. The lower the barrier of data entry is, the more likely users would take the time to enter events.

User testing
I loaded the screenshots into and InVision project and sent the prototype to my partner for further testing. After a couple small tweaks I was ready to put together my 5 minute presentation for the class.
App Name
After a few different ideas. I settled on the name Let’s Go! because it seemed fun and conveyed that enthusiasm I was trying to capture with this app.
Enhancements
One area for improvement could be the hamburger menu. I wrestled with the pros and cons of icons, which make the app faster but take up more space or the hamburger menu, which saves space on the main screen but requires an extra tap. User interviews and A/B testing could provide valuable data that leads to the right answer.
I wanted a way for people to convey enthusiasm about an event. This is written in one of my first sketches. The idea was that the user could press and hold the “!” button, enlarging the exclamation point so as to say, “No seriously! You should come to this!” I haven’t seen this feature on any other events sights, but in some ways it is similar to the “Superlike” feature on Tinder.
Introspection
I learned a lot about how important sketching is to the ideation process in UX design. I found sketching to be somewhat time consuming and difficult and was honestly horrified by how ugly it made my ideas look. I loved that it was a way to remember all my original ideas though. In the future I will be buying some nicer pens and pencils before I begin sketching.
I think one of the most difficult aspects of designing an app for this project was trying not to do something boring and derivative. I know a lot of app ideas have already been created, and we weren’t tasked with actually coming up with the brand new killer app idea that would take over the world. But I did want to incorporate some ideas inspired by my favorite apps and then rearrange and reconfigure them to create a fun new idea. I feel hopeful that this is just the beginning of many interesting mashups of ideas.
