FunNow
An app designed to help international students immediately find and engage in fun social activities.
Team
Individual
Duration
2 Months
Role
Product Designer
UI/UX Designer
UX Researcher
Tools
Problem
International students face many challenges in a new environment, including loneliness, difficulty adapting, language barriers, and inadequate social skills.
HMW
Problem Statement
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How can we design a user-friendly platform that enables international students to discover and engage in activities tailored to their interests easily?
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How can we leverage social networks to help international students establish connections and expand their circle of friends in a new environment, thus better integrating into local communities?
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How can we effectively connect international students with like-minded peers, allowing them to participate in activities based on shared interests and hobbies?
Solution
Sign up
Offering users the option to log in to social media platforms promotes more friendships. In addition, it provides personalized event recommendations based on the user's choice of event tags of interest.
Follow friends by discover
Allows users to connect with potential friends through the alumni network and gain insight into their area, interests, activities they participate in, etc. It helps users find like-minded friends.
Attend an event
Users can explore events by accessing key details like descriptions, participants, and pricing, aiding their decision-making. The app also highlights the ability to join 'Event Groups' for pre-event networking and enhanced communication.
Create an event
Users can ensure an easy understanding of the event with participants by entering precise details such as time, content, and location. Additional features such as tags and participant limits enable users to post more specific event information, which helps people interested in similar events find the event quickly.
Design Process
I used secondary research to find out how international students socialize. The primary research focuses on the reasons why international students have few social activities.
Secondary Research
I referred to articles and research reports on international students and social media usage. These resources gave me valuable insights into international students' challenges and how they use social media to integrate into new environments.
"A structured social media profile becomes a vital tool for international students to forge social ties and gain support."
"Social media serves as a gateway for these students to grasp local culture and engage in societal activities, easing their integration."
"Maintaining connections with friends and family through social media can alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation for international students."
Primary Research
"Research & Findings: Through surveys, market and competitor analysis, I uncovered international students' needs, challenges, and social-seeking behaviors. This led to key findings and guided design decisions."
Through interviews and user research with international students, I summarized the following key findings and application design decisions:
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Social activities with shared interests: To meet the needs of international students to participate in activities with like-minded people, my application allows users to add activity tags during registration, so the system can recommend relevant activities based on interests.
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Alleviating loneliness: As loneliness is a common problem faced by international students, my application provides a friend-adding function, allowing users to establish contacts through Facebook, alumni, and other means to expand their social circles.
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Flexible scheduling: To address the problem of time limitations affecting international students' participation in social activities, my application allows users to create their own activities and invite other friends to participate, enabling them to participate in social activities according to their own schedules.
Affinity Map
After interviewing users, I summarized 8 different directions and perspectives and produced them using an affinity map.
For example:
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The main reason for their loneliness was the lack of social and like-minded friends. This suggests they need better ways to discover social activities and people with similar themes.
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I also learned that their language barrier might cause difficulties in socializing and making friends, which suggests that the user interface and vocabulary design needs to be simple and concise.
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In addition, time constraints may limit their opportunities to engage in social activities, suggesting that the application needs to give users more time options and inform them.
Empathy Mapping
After conducting the analysis, I learned about international students' social needs and challenges, which helped me make more informed decisions when designing the app to meet their expectations and needs.
Key findings:
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International students want to meet people with common interests and hobbies. This meant that our application needed to provide a powerful search and filter system so that users could easily find people who shared their interests.
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Social fear and self-doubt make making new friends difficult for many international students. We can alleviate their concerns by designing social features that make users feel more confident and comfortable.
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Users wanted to know more about the event and the participants before attending. Therefore, we need to provide detailed event descriptions and user information related to the event to help users make more informed decisions.
Persona
Next, I created a Persona, a virtual persona that combines the characteristics of all the interviewees.
Peter represents the typical international student, including their background, goals, motivations, and problems they encounter. By using this Persona, it allowed me to more clearly and quickly understand the needs and expectations of the target user group and thus provide more targeted solutions in the application design.
Solution Ideation
To help Peter better integrate into their new environment, make friends and participate in activities, we propose the following solutions:
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Provide school information for easy networking on campus.
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Use location-based features to find nearby events and neighbors easily.
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Browse or search for events on specific topics to make friends based on your interests.
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Join interest groups to improve communication skills and meet fellow students.
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Use social software to interact and learn about the background of event participants to reduce social tension.
These solutions are designed to help international students like Peter expand their social circles, increase their participation in social activities, and provide a richer experience of studying abroad.
User Stories
I identified four key features as the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). These features include creating a personal profile, adding friends, searching and joining events of interest, and creating custom events. These features aim to help international students better integrate into their new environment, meet new friends, and participate in exciting activities.
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Sitemap
Next, I created a Sitemap for the application to ensure a clear and easy-to-navigate structure. It includes major functional modules such as the event home page, Friends, Create, Chat, and Me. This ensures that the functional layout of the application is reasonable and that users can easily find and use the required significant functions.
User Flows
At this project stage, I created several user flow diagrams to illustrate the process of users performing key tasks in the application. This includes creating a personal profile, connecting with friends, joining events, and creating events. Through these user flow diagrams, I ensured that the design and structure of the application were intuitive and user-friendly, enabling users to achieve their goals and improving the overall user experience.
Initial Sketch
I visualized each page of each user flow using initial sketches. The sketches show the overall layout, functional distribution, and design elements of each page, providing a foundation for detailed design and prototyping. This process helps to discover and solve potential design problems while ensuring that the overall visual and functional effects of the application meet user needs and expectations.
Guerrilla Usability
Test
After conducting Guerrilla Usability Test, I gathered key insights from interacting with users and proposed improvement suggestions. These suggestions included adding personal information on the Friends page, optimizing the activity search function to meet users' filtering needs, and providing an intuitive and convenient personal profile editing function. Through these suggestions, the application will better meet the needs of international students and improve the user experience.
Wireframes +
Wire Flows
Next, I created wireframes that detailed the core features and layout of the application. This included four main red routes and additional branches, such as registration and login. Based on the wireframe design, I created wire flows to more clearly demonstrate the user's path and experience in the application. These design efforts helped ensure that the structure and navigation of the application were intuitive and easy to use.
Mood Board
A Mood board can help me clarify the overall tone and visual style of the project. The mood board includes images of sports, oceans, and keywords such as "enjoyment," "pleasure," and "free," which are closely related to the project's theme. My project aims to help international students find more social activities and new friends to better adapt to the new cultural environment and enjoy fun and freedom.
The blue and orange tones in the mood board, respectively, represent calmness and vitality, passion, and enthusiasm. These two colors combined represent our hope that international students can maintain a calm attitude while feeling the passion and vitality of new friends and social activities. These colors also echo the ocean and sky elements in the mood board, reminding international students to embrace challenges and opportunities in a completely new environment. These visual effects help create a positive and inspiring social experience for international students.
Style Guide
I created a style guide to provide design standards for the entire project, ensuring consistency throughout the design process. I chose Work Sans and Inter, two sans-serif fonts, as the main fonts for the application, which have high readability and versatility and are suitable for different platforms and screen sizes. Work Sans is known for its simple and elegant design, combined with the Inter font, achieving a balance between form and function, making the application visually appealing and easy to read and use.
In terms of UI elements such as buttons, labels, etc., I used modern design techniques, adjusting the curvature of the outer border to make it more beautiful. At the same time, I paid attention to details such as text size ratio and interaction mode to ensure that the user experience of the application was friendly and efficient. The style guide provides a clear framework for the entire design process, helping to maintain visual consistency throughout the project.
High Fidelity
Mockups
Next, I created high-fidelity mockups, which showcase the detailed design of the application at all levels, including layout, color, font, and interactive elements. High-fidelity prototypes provide me with a more precise visual and functional reference, which helps ensure the quality of the final product and optimize the user experience. By creating high-fidelity prototypes, I can conduct more in-depth evaluation and testing of the application, allowing for necessary adjustments and optimizations during the actual development phase.
Prototype
Prototype design allows me to test and validate design ideas before actual development. At this stage, I converted the high-fidelity mockups into an interactive prototype for user testing and evaluation. The prototype design enables me to understand user behavior better and needs when using the application, identify potential issues, and optimize them before the project's development stage. Through prototype design, I can ensure that the application meets the needs of international students in terms of functionality and user experience.
Usability Testing
In the final design testing, I conducted two rounds of usability testing, collected user feedback, and improved the application. In the first round of testing, I had testers complete a series of tasks to understand their feelings and identify any issues, and make changes to the application based on their feedback. In the second round of testing, I had testers complete tasks again to evaluate the effectiveness of the changes and make further improvements. Some significant enhancements included adjusting the color of the navigation bar on the main page, optimizing the shadow effect of activities, redesigning the notification feature, and improving the display of functions on the Friends page. Through these two rounds of testing, the usability and user experience of the application were significantly improved.
Iterate Prototype
In the final stage of the design process, I further optimized the application through Iterate Prototype to improve its performance and user experience. This also marks the completion of my design process, which emphasizes continuous improvement and a user-centric design approach to continuously improve the performance and user experience of the application in future iterations.
Sign Up
Sign In
Follow Friends
By Search
Follow Friends
By Discover
Attend Event
Create Event
Interactive Prototype
Showcase
Sign Up
Sign In
Follow Friends
By Search
Follow Friends
By Discover
Attend Event
Create Event
Summary
In this case study, I demonstrated the design process of an application targeting international students. From researching and interviewing users, extracting key insights, and creating prototypes, to conducting multiple rounds of usability testing and optimization, I always focused on user needs and experiences. Through continuous iteration and improvement, the application's design was better able to meet the expectations and needs of international students.
This case study not only showcased a successful design process but also highlighted a user-centered design mindset. In future development, I will continue to pay attention to user feedback and continuously optimize the application to provide international students with a more efficient, enjoyable, and attractive social platform. By helping them expand their social circle, find suitable activities, and make new friends, I aim to equip international students better to adapt to new cultural environments and fully enjoy their time abroad.