The Introduction
Outgoing is a responsive website that allows users to create an itinerary of popular activities in their area that can be shared with friends and updated while out and about. For this project, our team was given an area to focus on to create a responsive web design for a problem within the area of entertainment. To figure out the space we wanted to focus on we performed multiple interviews, multiple rounds of design iteration, and testing. What we found was that users were having a hard time putting together a plan and keeping everyone together while they were out on the town. To combat this issue we focused on the features such as; a shareable itinerary, maps of what is nearby, and reliable reviews. Through our testing, we were able to make iterations throughout the design process to create a fun, user-friendly, and delightful experience for users.
The Scope
Entertainment
How might we ensure people have a way to plan and explore entertaining experiences in their community, city, or current location?
The Project
Goal: Responsive Website
Mobile & Desktop
The Timeline
2 Week Sprint
12/06/21 - 12/17/21
The Team
UX Designers
Chloe Mason
Angelina McSweeney
Tanner Jorgenson
Evangelou Refundo
Discovering the Problem
Outgoing was created to help users have a more seamless experience when it comes to their plans while they are having a night out - or planning an excursion in a location they aren't familiar with. To meet these pain points and create the right product, we conducted research, multiple iterations of design, and usability testing to make sure that Outgoing is user-friendly and meets the needs of our target user.
Our Process
01
RESEARCH
02
DESIGN
03
TESTING
04
CONCLUSION
01. Research
To get started we had to understand our problem space and what we would be able to bring to the area of entertainment to aid our users. By creating a screener survey we were able to narrow down 6 different interviewees that fit our target audience so we could be sure that our design was centered around our research findings. From all of our research, we were able to find that there were certain insights and findings that we wanted to focus on, the most notable being:
Interview Findings:
Likes
People are regularly searching for new entertainment that they find enjoyable.
Reviews
Users find it important that experience reviews are reliable and relevant.
Habits
Users find it helpful to search for new and exciting activities within their vicinity.
Canceling
Users need to be notified when their plans change, with an offer of a backup solution.
Persona
To reference our target demographic and user throughout our process, we created Maya. She is a busy millennial who struggles to make fun plans with her friends for nights out and weekends. As our team moved through our process we made sure to keep Maya's goals, needs, and frustrations in mind. We wanted to make sure we weren't designing what we wanted but something that Maya needs.
Journey Map
As a team, we wanted to be able to visualize Maya's journey throughout her day. We see that while she has some high points she is still experiencing quite a few low points in her day when it comes to making plans. After working all week it is finally Friday and Maya doesn't have any plans but she wants to meet up with some friends. Not getting any bites on making plans she decides to go to a restaurant that she loves, unfortunately, it is full and there is a long wait. She tries someplace new but the food is underwhelming and cold. Maya shares her experience and her friends invite her out to a busy bar with live music and they share a fun night out before Maya heads back home. We want to keep these high and low points of Maya's day in mind because it will help us connect to our target users as we move forward in the process. Making sure that we meet all of Maya's needs as well as noting any opportunities that we can find to improve Maya's night out with her friends.
02. Where Insights Meet Design
For us to turn these previous insights from research into a design we had to think about the features they become. The following are these insights and the potential features that as a team we have thought about creating:
Location
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Map overview of nearby locations with ratings.
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Add easy access to directions to a new nearby location.
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Overview of wait times at nearby bars/restaurants.
Share
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Itinerary that can be shared with friends.
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Customization to itinerary across accounts.
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Directions for locations that can be easily shared with your network.
Menu
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Categories that allow easy filtering based on popular activities.
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Emphasis on graphics to assist with story-telling for available options in each category.
Ratings
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Vetted reviews for activities and events in the area.
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Quality assurance for available ratings - with a quick overview.
The Creation
As a team, we started our design process with a few rounds of the design studio. This allowed us to start with basic visualization and come together on the layout that we imagined for the features and layout for Outgoing. From this point, we created a mid-fidelity version of our design to test the basic navigation to make sure it was intuitive to our users before distracting them with colors and visuals. Based on the feedback we received during our second round of usability testing, we compiled a list of changes that we kept in mind as considerations for future iterations of our design.
Evolution of Outgoing
03.Testing Our Theories
The following is a summary of the feedback we received from each usability test, and the design changes we made to the MidFi prototype as a result.
Features to adjust:
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Collaborative share option to allow collaboration on the itinerary
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Legend for map layout to keep from visually overwhelming users
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Ratings on the map for easy scanability
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Itinerary access from the exploration and creation pages
Once our design was complete, we ran another round of usability testing. For our second round of testing, we recruited 5 individuals to run through the same three tasks. Our team found that the success rate and time on task for the first and second tasks improved. However, the third task took longer and decreased in success rate in the second round of usability testing. This could be due to participants taking in the branding and visual elements displayed to them.
04. Conclusion
We found that the updates made to the design for Outgoing accomplished our goal of creating a fun, user-friendly, and delightful experience. As we finished up our design for this project there were a few things we wanted to keep in mind moving forward with our findings including iterations on the following;
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Explore different naming conventions
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Back buttons
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Modify imagery for foods and activities
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Make "add to itinerary", and "share" buttons a different color for the calls to action
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Remove the "current itinerary" button from the home page
Overall, the experience with this team creating Outgoing ended up being a great learning opportunity for us as a team. We were able to overcome obstacles while coming together, iterating throughout the design process. While working together to offer users a more accessible approach to creating plans for outings that are new, exciting, and enjoyable!