Nodal: connect, collaborate, compete — Case Study
Research
Client meeting
Sarvind Rathakrishnan came to us with his idea for an app, Nodal. A social networking platform that aimed to give university students a way to connect and communicate with each other. Sarvind described how difficult it was for university students, especially first years, to find other students to join competitions with. Nodal would allow students to assemble a team for whatever competition was being held.
Monetization for Nodal would be achieved by charging organizations for posting their competitions. In return, the posted competitions would receive more exposure as well as a higher level of participation from students. Individual users would be able to use Nodal for free.
Demographics
The first step in our research was to determine if there was a market for Nodal. Preliminary domain research revealed that there were no other apps that filled the niche that Nodal was trying to fill. The closest competitors we could identify was Facebook, this was corroborated by our interviews. Several people identified Facebook as a method of acquiring teammates for past competitions.
We also distributed surveys to university students to gather information on their general attitudes and preferences. The surveys were distributed online but a vast majority (about 70%) were completed in person as we canvased the university residences at UBC. Most of the students surveyed were first year students.
From the students we interviewed we determined that not only do a lot of students have prior experience in competitions but a lot also relocate for university. Relocating for university suggests that upon entering their first year university students may not have the social circle necessary to easily construct a full team to enter a competition with. This information is also corroborated by our interview responses. These two responses taken together seems to suggest that there are a large number of students that would like to enter competitions but lack the social network to easily do so. This demonstrates a strong potential market for Nodal.
We also identified that a majority of students use iOS devices, so the decision to develop for that platform is also appropriate.
Early ideas for the potential layout of Nodal included a Tinder like swipe mechanic, as well as potential LinkedIn integration. Our survey results showed that neither of these applications was popular among first year students. While 33% of the people surveyed reported having a LinkedIn account a vast majority were 2nd year students and above. When only looking at first year student responses, only about 8% of students had a LinkedIn account. Almost every student reported having a Facebook or Google account and Instagram and Snapchat were also extremely popular.
Competition Attitudes
A separate survey was created to gather attitudes and preferences for competitions in general. Due to the low response rate to the survey, the results we got were not heavily considered. Some findings, however, are still interesting to consider and support the information gathered from other sources. Such as the motivations people have for joining competitions. According to responses, two of the leading reasons for joining competitions is personal growth and having fun.
Most of the information on competitions came from our interviews. We talked to around 10 to 12 different people in both face to face interviews and over the phone. Most of the people interviewed were contacts given to us by Sarvind and were UBC students. Other people we interviewed were competitive video gamers. Their motivations for joining competitions matched our findings from our survey, most had joined for fun or to learn, but we were also able to identify a third major motivation, to win. Additionally, when asked what made a team dysfunctional, several people said that misaligned goals caused conflict within the team. One person lamented that the worst experience he’s had in a competition was when he just wanted to learn and grow his own abilities while his teammates were all about winning; this puts a lot of unwanted pressure on him. Conversely, teams that had goals and motivations that were similar were considered some of the best teams interviewees had been in.
Work style was also a potential point of conflict within groups. We identified two main different working styles that most people utilized. The first being what we dubbed as a collaborative style, where a group member preferred to work together with their other group mates all the time. The second, what we called the independent style, was when a group member preferred to do a part of the work by themselves and combine it with the other group member’s work at the very end. Several interviewees stated that groups that had a mix of the two work styles tended to be more dysfunctional than groups that all shared a similar style.
Planning
One of the primary goals of Nodal is to match group members together. Initially the method of how it would achieve this was not clear. Through our research, we concluded that some groups are more functional than others based on the similarities of its group members on several factors, the most prominent of which being preferred working style and motivations for joining a competition. An automatic matchmaking service would be able to assemble teams of similar people and create groups that would have a high level of functionality.
Before we could go any further with that design idea we had to solidify who were are designing Nodal for. Based on Sarvind’s request and our own research we constructed Thomas Tahan.
Thomas is a first year business student at UBC. He’s an international student originally from Egypt and is a very friendly and sociable person. He has a lot of friends back home in Egypt but knows next to no one here in Vancouver. He hears that joining competitions is a great way to meet people, Nodal can aid him in this endeavor.
Since his primary reason for joining a competition is to meet people he’s not overly concerned with winning. He just wants to have fun. It is important that Thomas is grouped with other people that share this motivation, otherwise, he risks joining a dysfunctional group and not making the social connections he’s looking for.
To achieve this goal Thomas must be able to create an account so he can indicate this preferences for work style and motivation, as well as general contact information such as name and e-mail. His profile can also be personalized with a profile picture to help other students recognize him. Nodal will also need to have a list of competitions that Thomas can browse so he can find a competition that suits him. After searching and finding an appropriate competition to join the matchmaking system kicks into action and finds a group that Thomas will work well with. Once a group is found, Thomas will be prompted to join that group immediately, with the option of choosing another group if he wishes. This is to help alleviate the stress of making a choice and to give the Thomas the satisfaction of knowing the group that was chosen for him is the best one available (Scheibehenne, Greifeneder and Todd 2010). Additionally, if Thomas does decide to browse other groups the number of matches should be kept as close to 10 as possible to ensure Thomas is not overloaded with options and to ensure he ultimately does make a choice (Shah and Wolford 2007). Once he enters a group he still has the option to leave but ideally, this is where Nodal’s job is finished.
Design
One of the first pages the user will see when starting Nodal is the account creation page. Here users are prompted to give their name, email and to create a password. This simple form can be skipped entirely if they create an account with their Facebook account. We included a Facebook account creation option to make the signup process easier for users and based on the research that showed that nearly everyone had a Facebook account. Creating an account with Facebook has the added bonus of importing the user’s Facebook profile picture and school in addition to their name and email. A password would not need to be created since all future logins would be done through a “login through Facebook” option.
After creating their account, users would be prompted to select which working style works best for them. This is an important step since it will be a factor in matchmaking, as research indicated that groups with similar working styles worked well together. The option of “either” is available for people who don’t know what style they are or for people who don’t care. The option to change their style is always available in their user profile. This screen also teaches the user about the different working styles. The user is taken to the “home” page afterward, the competition category list.
The first page we designed was the competition list page. On this page, the user could view all the different types of competitions available to chose from. Since this page was so important to the user flow, it was made into the ‘home’ page, where the user would land immediately after they logged in. If the user did not want to browse for a new competition to join there was a navigation bar on the bottom of the screen that allowed the user to navigate to another key area of the app (search, message inbox, and user profile). If the user ever needed to quickly navigate back to the competition category list again they could do so from a button on the bottom navigation bar. A featured competition was placed at the top of the app to not only highlight a popular competition (one that would interest most users) but also as an extra source of revenue (organizations can spend more to have their competition featured)
Once a category is clicked the user would be taken to a list of competitions listed under that category. Clicking the star would save the competition to the user’s profile for future considerations and click on the competition name would bring them to the competition information page
In the competition details page, the user would be given all the prudent information on the competition itself, such as the entry fee, registration deadline, team size, etc. Clicking on the “find a group” button will take the user to the start of the matchmaking process. If the matchmaking process has not been started previously and not yet completed, or if a group has already been joined the “find a group” button will change accordingly.
Before the user is considered for the matchmaking process they must first fill out a small form to indicate their motivations for joining this specific competition. Since user motions can change from competition to competition (as indicated from our interviews) a new form will need to be filled out for every competition joined. As the sliders are changed the info-graphic displayed on the bottom of the form will be updated in real time, this will not only give the user a experience of delight but also teach the user how to read the infographic.
The info-graphic that represented the motivations of the user was a point of heavy consideration. We needed to convey as much information as possible in as little space as possible. We considered four different potential graphical representations for motivations, a colored circle bar graph, a black and white circle bar graph, a black and while circled line graph, and a color spectrum. For the circled graphs each axis corresponded with a different motivation that users would self-report on a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 being on the outer edge of the circle and 0 being in the center. The color spectrum would have a different level of RGB depending on the reported motivations, with each of the 3 colors (red green and blue) being mapped to a single motivation and becoming more intense as the reported motivation value increased.
A survey was passed out to identify peoples effectiveness at reading each of the four graphical representations. In the survey, users were asked to pick 2 of the closest matching graphical representations to a provided example icon. All answers and questions were multiple choice and randomized in order. After all the questions were answered users were asked what graphical style did they find easiest to read, with the colored circle graph and color spectrum being the two most popular.
However, when looking at the user’s effectiveness at reading the two most preferred graphical representations there were small differences. Users were extremely good at picking the closest matching color in the color spectrum but were somewhat inaccurate in choosing the 2nd best option, confusing it easily with the 3rd best.
Users had a high level of accuracy at choosing the best and 2nd best matches with the colored circle bar-graph, with just a slight cost of overall accuracy. Ultimately the colored circle bar-graph was chosen as the info-graphic we would use since the color pallet matched our style guide and users had an easy time reading it.
We also tested to make sure the colors we chose for the info-graphic was intuitively matched to each motivation style. We asked users what of the four colors from our style guide best matched our three motivation factors. Win, Fun and Grow (we changed the motivation known as ‘Learn’ to ‘Grow’ to also include things like personal development)
In our survey we found that a majority associated the orange color with “Win” (39%), “Fun” (58%), and “Grow” (71%). Using these results and the results from the info-graphic readability questions we created our info-graphic, dubbed the “motivation cirGoal”.
After confirming their motivations the user would be matched with other users with similar motivations who are also interested in the same competition. Once a group is found the user would be asked to join to group by simply typing something into the chat.
The user would also be given the choice to browse another group if they wished. The group they were originally matched to would be placed on the top to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they can pick the best group (Scheibehenne, Greifeneder and Todd 2010) and the number of choices should be kept at around 10 (Shah and Wolford 2007). The motivation cirGoal would be displayed here to give the user an idea of the general attitude of the group members, where the displayed value of the cirGoal would be an average of all existing group members. Clicking on a group would take the user to the group chat, where the user could choose to type something and enter the group.
The user can also click on the group info button on the group chat page (the “i” button) to take them to the individual group member screen, where they can see the names, motivations, and contact info for each individual group members. If the user is not a part of the group they can join it from this screen, if they are a part of the team their profile will appear at the top and the “join team” button will change to a “leave team button”. Clicking on a group member will bring you to their profile.
The user’s profile will be where changes can be made to the user’s name, faculty and school, profile picture, preferred work style (which is a matchmaking variable) as well as a short bio and a list of skills. Competitions the user is participating in will be listed as well as any competitions the user has starred.
Testing and Changes
When we started testing, testers were a little confused on what they could do in the app. The decision was made fairly early to add on-boarding screens to teach the user about the key features of the app, like the matchmaking process.
Testers also commented that they did not know what the cirGoal represented by the time they made it to the “browse group” page. To fix this problem we not only added the on-boarding screen (seen above) but also changed the motivation slider pop up to include a real time alteration of the cirGoal.
We also added a descriptive graphic to the loading screen displayed during the matchmaking process to help reinforce both what the user is being matched by as well as the meaning of the cirGoal.
The prototype was originally set to automatically progress to the next screen after a couple seconds (to simulate loading). We found that during testing, the testers would tap impatiently on the screen trying to progress, while other users tried to swipe backward after the loading screen finished because they did not finish reading and looking at the picture from the loading screen. To combat both issues we added a button that would be greyed out during loading, and clickable after loading was finished. The screen would only progress once the clickable button was pressed.
During the on-boarding process users were also got a little lost during the profile creation stage. Intentionally users were taken to the profile edit page straight away. The intention was so they have the option to change their working style right away. Late in the design process the decision was made to add the work style selection page to appear as it’s own pop-up after the user created his account for the first time. This helped streamline the experience and ensured that the appropriate work style was chosen, which is important for matchmaking.
Initially, the competition category page was confusing to users, they did not know that the categories described potential competition choices. To fix the ambiguity the word “competition” was added to the page, and the category options were changed from a list to a more attractive icon style.
The browse group page also lacked a lot of information for the user. Originally, in order to check the motivations of each group users would need to click into the group chat, and then again into the group info page. This lead to massive pogoing in and out of pages. Each group icon was made bigger to make room for the motivation cirGoal to be shown as clearly as possible.
Future Directions / Conclusion
A couple interesting features of Nodal had to be cut or left undeveloped in order to keep the project in scope. These features can be included in future iterations of the app. One of the most useful would be some way to filter user or group match making results to find a person with a specific skill or from a particular facility. This would enable users to find a teammate to fill a particular role in the group. More variables for matchmaking could also enable better group matches. Both of these considerations would require a higher user-base. It is unclear how many users would use Nodal when it first launches, but estimations from Sarvind land around 300.
User submitted competitions can also be a consideration for the future so that smaller events can get a foothold and potentially reach a level of awareness that they would not achieve otherwise. This could also include people looking for a group for an unlisted event.
The matchmaking system solves one of the problems Nodal sought to fix, and it could potentially do it in a very efficient way. Currently, groups for competitions like JDC are picked solely on academic achievement which, according to interviews, can lead to dysfunctional groups. A matchmaking app like Nodal may prove to be a better alternative.
References
Avni M. Shah and George Wolford (2007). Buying Behavior as a Function of. Parametric Variation of Number of Choices. Psychological Science, Vol. 18 (5), 369–370.
Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder and Peter M. Todd (2010). Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload. Journal of Consumer Research, Vol.37 (3), 409–425
