Singleton

Community connection solution for young professionals — Generation Y and Z

Tunc Karadag
Tunc Karadag | User Experience Designer

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Project Overview

Singleton is an online social platform for busy young professionals (aged 18-35, born between 1985–2002) living in the same residential areas.

While we are in the middle of the coronavirus crisis, it is quite an unusual times for everyone. We all figure out how our system is vulnerable. For the last couple of decades, the world faced various crisis and this led to the change of society. We created sentiments against politicians, global warming, pollution, privacy, even to the companies. We have new terminologies like “social distancing”.

Covid-19 makes us stay at home for months and redefining our social codex. Social relationships with our friends, families, professional lives are redefining. Roughly our lifestyle changing. This crisis may also represent new opportunities. The usage of technology, redefinition of indoor and outdoor activities force us to think about new solutions.

Perhaps we can use our time with our devices to rethink the kinds of the community we can create through them. Prof. Sherry Turkle, MIT

Phase 1: User Research

In September 2000, there was an article published on the Advertising Age, about the new demographic portion of our society named Generation Z. Other proposed names for the generation were iGeneration, Gen Tech, Gen Wii, Homeland Generation, Net Gen, Digital Natives, Plurals, Post-Millenials, Generation Snowflake, Neo-Digital Natives, and Zoomers.

Generation X people were born between 1960 and 1980 in a context of global political conflict. They are the first digital immigrants who experienced the arrival of the internet. This is why they can adapt to change so easily.

Generation Y people were born between 1980 and 1995, experienced the birth of globalization. They are the first multi-screen users. Social media arrived with this generation and they use social media at all times, especially Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. They are optimistic and narcissistic. The culture of the selfie was born with them. They are also called Millennials.

Generation Z people were born between 1996 and 2009, are known as digital natives. They communicate with images and short texts. This is why they love to use Snapchat and Instagram. They share non-stop and generate content. They are also committed to helping others, inclines to group activities and committed to the environment.

The generation was born after 2010 called Alpha Generation. Still, we have time to see their behavioural differences from other generations.

Target users of Singleton are Generation Y and Z. So, for the User Research phase, I am going to focus on the socialization preferences and parameters of these groups.

By 2019, the total number of Generation Y reached 17 million and Generation Z reached to 18.2 million people in the UK. With 40% of all consumers expected to be Gen Z by 2020.

Generation Y (Millenials) became the main user group for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. One of the most definite habits of Millenials is a constant connection. They share their feelings and thoughts on social media on a daily basis. Because of the daily use of various social media platforms and messaging applications, Millenials are characterized by shorter memory spans compared to the previous generations. They gained the attitude of observing information in short pieces and struggling when challenged with more complex ideas.

Generation Z (Post-Millenials) receives their first mobile phone at the age of 10. They are born to the age of rapid innovation and the level of technology they are expecting to use is higher than in previous generations. They spend a minimum of 3 hours on their mobile devices.

Generation Y people were born during the economic growth times, that makes them optimistic, trusting, and work collaboratively. But Generation Z people grew up during the economic recession times, that makes them more pragmatic, higher awareness of global problems. Approximately 60% of Generation Z want to change the world while 39% of Generation Y want this.

Under the pressure of economic recession, Generation Z learns how to manage their personal finance much quicker than previous generations. They can create a more comprehensive financial approach to protect themselves and avoid debts.

Generation Y has become digital immigrants, while Generation Z is already digitally native. Post-Millenials born and raised in the hyper-connected world, are generally independent, sceptic and hold to more realistic views than Millenials or other previous generations.

For Post-millennials, technological products and services are not super exciting. Most of them continuously experiencing top-notch devices. While Millennials strongly prefer digital communication, Generation Z will choose for face-to-face communication when possible.

User Personas

According to the main characteristics and preferences of both Generation Y and Z, I created 3 user persona.

Storyboard

George is working in an advertising agency as a media buyer. He has a busy and stressful working environment. George continuously follows the media, assess the efficacy of certain platforms, media channels and then he makes the important decisions about where their advertising campaigns are going to be released.

After a busy week, George prefers to make a plan for the weekends by having new experiences in his local neighbourhood. He just wants to make a contribution by being an active member of his community. George is looking for local events, joining to workshops or meets new people who have the same interests but Facebook or other social platforms require too much effort for finding proper alternatives. So this a cumbersome for him to find relevant information about his community and reach to the people in the same residential area.

Singleton creates an opportunity for George who wants to establish social connections with others in the same neighbourhood. It also provides a solution for finding similar interest groups, meeting and helping his neighbours.

There are lots of social community platforms exists on the market. One of the biggest is Facebook. Other platforms are trying to specialise in different verticals.

Some of the existing Social Community Platforms

Phase 2: Ideate (generating ideas for design)

By reviewing existing community platforms functionalities, I tried to create an insight into Singleton’s core abilities.

Brainstorming

There are lots of functions we can specify for a community platform. I tried to collect all different functions on a whiteboard. Then by regrouping those functions,

Before starting to User Flow, I am trying to see the core processes based on persona goals of George.

User Flow

I created a basic user flow for George to complete the core tasks like creating an account, search interest groups, join selected group, check existing posts and member in the group. Final point is to make a connection with a group member by sending a message and getting acceptance.

Core User Flow for George

Based on previous flow, I tried to look to the product in a holistic way and tried to increase to the level of detail by means of navigation, functions, hierarchy, domains and subdomains. Tried to see cross-relations between different screens.

Information Architecture for Singleton

Phase 3: Prototype (turning ideas into concrete examples)

Low-fidelity Prototypes

Information architecture gave me a chance to see the whole picture.
Based on this IA, I started to think about the layout and navigation of the project. We are making a location-based solution while creating a user account, address proof is an important step.

I decided to make a small research about similar products where the verification of the user’s residence is crucial. And end up with a possible solution.

Requesting two of these documents will be a solution.

  • Valid UK driving license
  • Recent utility bill (gas, electricity, water or landline phone)
  • Council tax bill
  • Recent credit card or bank statement
  • Recent Building Society or Credit Union statement
  • Tenancy agreement

High-fidelity Prototypes

By the creation of wireframes, I focused on the visual style of the UI. Users will be

Landing Page
Home / News Feed Page
Calendar Page
Events Page
Selected Event’s Page
Groups Page
Selected Group’s Page
User Profile Page

Thank you 😊

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