After graduating from school in 2017, I set a goal for myself of launching a digital product. I started off by looking at problems that people in my social group were experiencing. While I was not familiar with UX design at this stage in my career, a lot of the steps that I took came from the UX design process.
Planning social events is challenging. I often found myself in the situation where my friends and I wanted to do something, but we didn't know what to do. On top of that, we did not have an organized way to decide. Group chats are chaotic, and were not easy to plan events over. The more I spoke to people outside of my social group about this problem, the more I realized that it wasn't an isolated issue. As a result, I decided that this was the issue that I wanted to address.
To get a better understanding of what was required, I spoke to a handful of potential users. Some of the biggest challenges include:
1. Finding something exciting to do that is relevant to one's interests.
2. Having members of your social group decide on which activity to partake in.
3. Finalizing the plans.
Based on those challenges, I began to brainstorm ways that my app can be designed in order to address the users' needs.
After understanding the user requirements, I moved towards creating a wireframe so that I could gain feedback from users, as well as to help communicate my idea to the developer and UI designer. By using Balsamiq, I was able to create a wireframe of all of the app's major screens, which I then created a prototype from to show potential users. This was my first introduction to user testing. By creating a feedback loop, I was able to gain feedback on the idea, as well as the functionality of the app.
After multiple rounds of testing with potential users, I worked closely with a UI designer, as well as a developer in order to finalize and launch the app. The final version of the prototype can be seen below.
I help tech startups validate new ideas and build human centred products that customers love.
