The problem
In today's busy world, balancing work and family leaves little time for social gatherings, which are crucial for reducing stress and maintaining friendships.
However, organising social events is challenging due to:
- Scheduling conflicts
- Communication issues
- Desire for enriching & engaging experiences
- Concerns about the quality of social interactions
- Logistical hurdles (travel, children, etc.)
- The effort required to organise
Apps are often used for organising such social gatherings with friends, but they don't address all these problems.
The solution
I designed an app to address the challenges of organising social gatherings with friends.
Key features
- Shared calendar: friends can join their external calendars together to see their collective free time
- Gathering proposals: friends can propose social gatherings to each other and counter with alternative suggestions
- Friend circles: users can manage gatherings and communications with specific groups of friends
- Venues & events: users can browse venues and events to gather with their friends at
- Notifications: users receive email/push notifications when events are proposed or updated
Benefits
- Users can see when their friends are available, within specific social circles
- Users can negotiate the specifics of social gatherings with their circles to find something that works for everyone
- No need to communicate individually with each invitee across different channels
- Enriching & engaging social gatherings can be organised around events
- Less effort required to coordinate
- More satisfying and frequent social gatherings
Learning about users & the problem space
I interviewed 4 people with a range of ages, backgrounds, occupations and family structures.
My observations:
Managing irregular schedules
People's schedules are often irregular, requiring various physical and digital tools for visibility and accountability. Flexibility is expected and important as there are often factors beyond their control.
Attendance logistics
Logistical factors such as transport and managing children are a huge consideration in deciding whether to attend a social gathering.
Social “crews” & regular meetups
Most people have circles of close friends they meet regularly, with little upfront organisation.
Food or cultural focal points
Social events often revolve around food or a cultural event, which provide inspiration or learning.
Avoiding poor quality social interactions
Quality of social interaction can impact enjoyment of gatherings - people often avoid certain events because they don't want to have to carry shallow and uninteresting conversations.
Gaps in communication across channels
Communications are often scattered across various channels and are direct with each individual invitee, leading to missed updates. People often aren't diligent about informing others of their changes in plans.
Finding the gap in the market
I examined 4 existing products, including direct & indirect competitors and adjacent products.
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These products fell into different categories:
- Professional event management: these include admin/ticketing and aren't suitable for social events
- Work events: these include some negotiation capabilities, but aren't aimed at social events
- Personal social events: these have limited capabilities and run on social networks which people are increasingly wary of
Who are the users and what are their needs?
Based on my research, two archetypal personas emerged.
These are their goals:
Anne, the creative collaborator
- Wants to attend more enriching/engaging cultural events
- Wants to be more inspired
- Wants to spend more time with friends and potential collaborators
- Wants to make better use of her time
Chris, the family man-ager
- Wants to spend more time socialising with friends
- Wants to spend less effort organising social events
- Wants to reduce stress
- Wants to be involved in his friend's lives
Addressing the opportunities
I identified two key opportunities based on competitive analysis and user research:
- Helping busy people make better use of their free time for social events
- Helping busy people manage the logistics of organising and attending social events
Which led to two concepts:
“Hangtime”
Users import their calendars into the app, and it identifies what times you and all your friends are free at the same time, enabling them to easily organise social events during those times.
“Friendscore”
Users can rate upcoming public events with their friends so they can build consensus about which public events they attend together.
The stronger combined solution:
This solution addresses the two key opportunities.
Key opportunity:
Key opportunities:
How this is addressed:
Helping busy people make better use of their free time for social events
How this is addressed:
- Users connect their calendars to the app and can see free times they share with friends
Helping busy people manage the logistics of organising and attending social events
How this is addressed:
- Users can propose social gatherings to their friends and make alternative suggestions
- Users can manage gatherings and communications with specific groups of friends
- Users can browse venues & events to gather with their friends at
- Users can automatically be notified of prospective social gatherings or updated plans
Validating the solution with users
I initially diagrammed user flows, before iterating through wireframe sketches to high fidelity interactive prototypes.
Flows prototyped:
- Proposing a social gathering to your close friends based on the shared calendar
- Suggesting an alternative venue for a proposed gathering
I tested these interactive prototypes with 5 potential users.
Design progression
Crafting the product identity
For this project I created a brand & design system, which I iterated concurrently with the final designs of the product. Feedback from other designers informed the development.
Identity development
Enhancements from feedback
When proposing a social gathering, users couldn't remember who was in each circle.
- Added list of all friends in social circle
Users weren't discovering venues and venue filters as easily as I had hoped. Also, the solution hadn't accounted for social gatherings in people's homes.
- Added a list of predefined invitee homes to choose as a venue
- Added tabs to switch between the lists of Favourites and Previously visited
- Added a preselected filter to filter venues by distance
It was discovered that users needed more information to make decisions and more contextual cues across a number of screens to know how to proceed on first use.
- Added textual explanations
- Added additional contextual information to drive decisions
Outcomes
The solution was rated highly for ease of use
6 – 7 out of 7
Most users said they would use the app as it would make organising social events much easier.
However, it could be further enhanced to:
- Be more conversational
- More closely reflect the way gatherings are current organised by people
- Allow chat and sharing of opinions on gathering options