Redesigning Weave Networking App
The Challenge
Brief: Redesign a part of the experience.
Duration: 2 days (March 2016).
Group size: 1 UX designer.
My role: User Research and Interaction Designer.
Tools: Adobe Experience Design.
Design Process: Created a persona, a scenario and redesigned an experience.
Summary
Desired Outcomes:
- Redesign an experience in the Weave App that makes it easier for people to arrange a meeting.
- Deliver wireframes of redesigned experience.
Process:
- Created a persona to have an idea of who this redesign is directed to.
- Created a scenario in which this persona could see herself using the App.
- Designed wireframes.
Insights- Decisions:
- Wanted to create a simple way of people meeting up through invites.
- Creating a persona helped direct the changes in the App.
Results:
- The prototype needs user testing to see if users would discover the new feature and would use it.
- Delivered wireframes. These wireframes don't look finished, they need more visual design.
Lesons Learned:
- It doesn't take too long to redesign a part of an experience, but testing it is important to see if users would appreciate the redesign or if it would be useless.
- An engineer's opinion is always useful to know if what you are designing is possible to code.
Case Study
USER'S PROBLEM:
It is difficult to save the specific day and time using Weave App.
SOLUTION:
Add the possibility of creating and sending invites on the App.
PERSONA:
I created a persona to have someone in mind when redesigning the flow.
SCENARIO:
After creating a persona, I decided to create a possible scenario:
- Lucy has heard of this new networking App called Weave. She downloads it on her phone.
- She goes on Weave and finds Helen Marti, the CEO of a company. They arrange a meeting.
- Lucy and Helen meet for coffee to talk about startups.
NOW VS. REDESIGNED:
These are the wireframes for starting a conversation in the current Weave App.
These are the redesigned wireframes including the new feature of creating an invite in the menu.
DESIGN DECISIONS:
Menu: When pressing to see more options, the menu should come from above instead of bellow to avoid that the keyboard hides it. To be able to see the menu when the keyboard is hiding it, it is necessary to get out of the conversation and get back in and hit the menu button before typing.
In the current version it takes three screens with the keyboard present to be able to see the menu, with the redesign, even if the keyboard is present, it only takes one.
Incorporating new feature: Since it is a networking App, I decided to incorporate a feature of "Create Invite" to make it easier for matches to arrange a meeting.
OTHER THINGS TO IMPROVE IN THE APP:
- Weave App has the feel of a dating App since it has incorporated the "Tinder swap". This may feel uncomfortable for people using it for the first time.
- For a networking App it doesn't make much sense that matches expire, as people are not constantly using the App and they might forget to talk to a person that they really wanted to meet.
- When writing phone numbers, it doesn't recognise it as a phone number thus it is difficult and time consuming to save numbers.
- Filters are not very visible, they are hard to find.
- There are no push notifications so it is difficult to know when someone has sent a message.
NEXT STEPS:
- User testing:
- See is the "create invite" button is intuitive to find.
- Find out if the new feature would be useful for people.
- Creating a prototype to test it easily.
- Once tested, add visual design.