La!
Let's pretend that you just relocated to a new city or even country. Sounds kinda scary, right? Unfamiliar places, people, and maybe even culture. You want to attend many events, but at the same time, you don’t want to stand in a dark corner like a sore thumb and try to identify a “victim” whom you want to start your first conversation with. A “victim,” as it is going to be an awkward conversation anyway.
What if I can tell you that there is a solution to the problem?
Why “La!” as a Project and as a Name?
My motivation
I don’t remember a few years in a row (I’m turning 33 this year) I spent living at one location. It is challenging.
I have to do a lot to settle down and feel more or less comfortable living in a new place. However, the most challenging part was and always is making new friends, going somewhere with them, and moreover enjoying every single moment of it. Intimidating, terrifying, frustrating, and frightening are the only words that come up to my mind when I think about going through this process over and over again.
Why I chose “La!” as a name
I was thinking about the purpose of the app, which is to attend events and find friends. After a while, I came up with this very wild idea to think about the time I experienced the happiness of having a real friend while attending an event and name the app after the word that describes the moment.
Half an hour later of looking through my memories, I remembered that the last time I had this feeling was while watching “It’s a Sin.” The moment, main characters were at a party and at the peak of their happiness. The moment when their friendship became a real thing was when they were saying “La!” over and over, probably thousands of times and laughed themselves into fits. So, “La!” became, for me, the word that describes that exact moment.
The Problem I Had to Solve & Input Data (the focus group/persona)
The problem
The problem I had to solve was regarding users of event apps claiming that they are going to attend an event, but in reality, they don’t show up.
My focus group/Persona
Middle-class men and women (30-55 years old) who have just recently relocated to another city or country.
The Solution I Came Up With
I created an event app with a couple of elements guiding a user toward attending an event.
My Role
I was the only person who worked on a project from the very beginning (secondary research) to the end (prototyped high-fidelity screens, written case study).
Competitive Landscape
I checked such apps like Facebook, MeetUp, and Eventbrite. I liked how Facebook approached the find-an-event flow. While using MeetUp, it was so helpful that I could check today’s, tomorrow’s, this weekend’s, or upcoming weekend’s events. I also liked how all the posted events were organized by criteria. Finally, on Eventbrite, I could only create an event which I kinda liked but didn’t see this feature on the app I was working on.
I was once again convinced of the correctness of my decision to go with this project after discovering findings from my Secondary Research
With my secondary research, I decided to focus on the human aspect of the problem, which is the consequences of a newbie’s social isolation. I found out that if a newbie remains lonely for a long time, in the short run, it usually causes depression and alcoholism, and in the long run, dementia and stroke.
As soon as I created the User Flows, I started to understand what kinds of elements I need to include in La!
While working on my User Flows, I was puzzled by the features I had to include in order to ensure that my user would attend an event he/she/they signed up for. The first element was my onboarding page, the second element was a friends page, and lastly, a survey a user could go through after attending an event.
After identifying what I wanted to include, I started working on my sketches.
In order to better understand what comes after what, I created the Wireframe
What I included in my Low-Fidelity screens
The first, second, and third screens are all about sign-up/log-in-flow. The fourth and fifth screens are a part of the onboarding flow. The sixth screen is a home page. The seventh screen is a profile page. The eighth and ninth screens are a part of the find-a-friend flow. The tenth screen is the events page. The eleventh screen appears after hitting the “Interested” button on the event page (10th screen).
Also, on the eleventh screen, I included the inform-a-new-friend-that-you’re-going-to-attend-an-event-flow. The twelfth screen is also a part of the inform-a-new-friend-that-you’re-going-to-attend-an-event-flow. Lastly, the last thirteenth screen is a notification for a user for an upcoming event.
While conducting my user interviews, I decided to ask my interviewees a couple of questions so that I could come up with better implications
for complications newbies have
-
I dedicated the first part of my research to answering a question, “Why do newbies decide not to attend an event they signed up for?”. The main reason was that it is not entertaining to attend events alone. That was why I had this idea first to try to help newbies to find new friends at a new place and only after that offer them events they could attend with new friends
-
Along the way, when conducting my interviews, I also decided to find out the other reasons why people from my focus group didn’t enjoy attending events found through such apps like Facebook or MeetUp. My findings were unexpected as the people whom I had interviewed spoke with one voice that listed events were not interesting. The solution I came up with to this part of the problem was to include on my onboarding page a couple of questions about a user’s interests and hobbies and, in the future, use the information to recommend events that are tightly related to a user’s interests
-
The third part of my research was all about trying to identify reasons why it is a complication for almost every newbie to find friends in a new place. The main components are different people, different mentalities, and different languages. Hence, I solved this problem by finding out at a stage of the onboarding page which native language a user is using, offering a user the possibility to continue to explore the app using a user’s native language and, in the future, tight up my recommendations for adding friends who speak the same language
The next couple of elements I created based on feedback from my first round of testing to ensure that a user will attend an event:
-
Included “going to attend” button below an event’s description by clicking which a user automatically became added to a list of visitors
-
I decided to go just with one “Confirm” button for my onboarding page
-
There were also three notifications I’ve included about an upcoming event a user signs up for so that a user won’t forget about an event and could make his/her/their plan around it
-
Lastly, I set up a survey that could help to correct all the inconsistencies on the app's recommendations in the case of the events page
High-Fidelity Screens
Closing Thoughts
I had only a month to solve the problem using various techniques and “squeezing” out from my interviewees not only feedback related to my low-fidelity and high-fidelity screens but also lots of comments on how life looks and feels like for a relocated newbie.
I also decided to interview different people for my low-fidelity and high-fidelity screens so that I would get as much feedback as possible. The main reason for this was that I noticed while conducting interviews for my previous projects, if I got the same people to interview for my low-fidelity and high-fidelity screens, I didn’t get a lot of notes for my second round of testing.
​
Additionally, all of the interviewees of each round of testing were excited to be among the first users whenever La! would be launched.
​