01. Project Background

Connecting with Purpose

Live Unlimited was my first project as well as working with clients and a team. The UI in this case study is slightly outdated to what it is now-- as it is still being developed. I stopped working on the project before the handoff to developers.

02. The Challenge

Creating a motivating environment through networking and events to donate to charity.

How can we ensure that we provide a positive/motivating experience through networking? What keeps us different from our competitors?

03. The Solution

A point tracking system that can be redeemed as donation money.

Our team's job was to integrate a bonus tracking system into the app and make it as seamless as possible to create a buzzing ecosystem.

04. Research

Finding pain points and empathizing with users

I first approached our research comparing with other social networking and event competitors. What was it that made Linkedin successful? Facebook? Eventbrite?

a) Proto Personas

Provisional personas based on types of people looking to network/join events.

b) Competitive Analysis

• Search filter that maximizes discoverability. Live Unlimited is going to be catered to diverse, professional users from different interests and backgrounds. How could we filter out exactly what the user would like to search?

• Simple and clean event onboarding. We also saw inspiration in Eventbrite's flexibility in its event creation.

05. The Approach

Putting it all together

a) Information Architecture

We created an affinity map to give us an idea of the information architecture. What contents were involved in each page? Features?

I sorted out our jumble of thoughts to give us a good idea of the app's backbone.

b) Low-fidelity Wireframing

During client meetings, we were introduced to their ideas.

06. Design Iteration 1

Introducing LU Initial Designs…

a) Community Search feature

Discovering Discoverability

💡Key Takeaways:

• We decided to keep the recommended search feature on the back burner. Because LU was starting off as a small local community, people can search for names they already know or link to their contacts.

• To filter through people in the future, users can search based on industry and passions to connect with others in their professional lane.

• We solved our posts dilemma by letting users add tags to their posts. This will ensure a quicker way to find posts users are interested in or tag specific posts.

b) Onboarding 1.0

Creating bonds between users and personalization

Onboarding will help users bond with one another and the recommendation features in the future.

Goals:

• Bold, eye-catching design as per the client’s request

• Distinction: goals were separated into three: career, personal, and community.

c) Profile iterations

Connecting all the information

Goals:

• The profile was by far the page we had the most iterations.

• Profile was so information-heavy, we wanted it to be skimmable.

• Too many button features would overwhelm the user.

07. Usability Testing

Streamlining the initial designs

I lead a usability test where I had 10 participants use the Think-Aloud Approach with certain tasks to fulfill. 

Usability Testing Goals:

• Test the basic understanding of the app

• Improve efficiency

• Identify pain points and confusion in the flow

• With limited money and time, many of our participants were friends and family and young entrepreneurs we believed would-be users of the app.

After redesigns, we conducted another round of usability tests. The second round, noticeable time efficiency increased among participants.

a) Onboarding 2.0

Creating the tone of the app

We had gone to our clients about accessibility issues, usability testing was able to push us to a compromise as users had a hard time reading the previous onboarding.

💡Key Takeaways:

1. Added a preface to the onboarding, setting the tone and expectations with the user before they entered.

2. We added a skip option. This would improve the user retention rate right from the start.
   As much as we wanted users to ponder over the onboarding questions, our participants for the user testing said they preferred to browse through the app first while they mulled over the questions on their own time. The option to not skip seemed like an obstacle they had to first pass which made it less appealing to dive into the app when they were not in the mindset to answer.

3. We separated Passions into two categories as there were differences between what interested the users for social causes and what they pursue in their personal time.

4. UX Writing! Some of the Passion words changed.
   Ex: Racial inequality - Racial equality.
   Once again, setting the importance of tone.

b) Wallet

The importance of visual language

💡Key Takeaways:

• Visual language: During usability testing, the point transaction visual language puzzled many testers. A red arrow inferred that donating was a negative action, whereas it was our motivation for users to donate. We finalized by separating the impact points earning and donations.

08. Prototype Demo

Introducing Live Unlimited

Disclaimer: Design is for a MVP, no concrete features or designs.

09. What Next?

Adding more features for motivation

More features. More motivational and personal features!

• I would add a rewards system for those who donate/redeem points past certain thresholds (possibly even a public shoutout). Guest lists would show in a hierarchy of who donated the most to least and what they contributed their points to (Ex. Indigenous charity, etc).

• Color Accessibility is a big issue in the current design. Although falls under WCAG Guidelines, there are still some areas that need more contrast.

10. Conclusion

Reflecting on constraints

Issues we faced

• Time and money. We did not use proper users for our research due to limitations. We always fell back on connections and friends for the usability tests. If we did, we could have gathered more accurate results and data. At most, we should have done guerilla testing.

• Quantitative data. We should have collected qualitative data along with qualitative. Although efficiency was noticeable in the second round of usability testing, data would be better evidence.

LOTS of reflection

• Research, research, research! Since the beginning, I have made a lot of assumptions about our users. I was able to push for usability testing which helped me build data and components that I never would have seen just on assumptions. Redesigning this, I would love to hear about the struggles and pain points users have with our competitors and how we can add that to LU.

• Team player. As a UX Designer, I am expected to collaborate and connect the bridge that divided us all. In that aspect. Reflecting on it now, I would have set expectations and explanations early on. Sharing my knowledge and frequent updates could have solved that issue and lessened the misconceptions.