LinkApp
Expertise
Platforms
Deliverables
Wireframes,
UX/UI Design,
Design System
Download App
Project Overview
LinkApp is the social networking app, that works as your personal radar for parties, events, and interesting people around. Find something to do tonight, join Geochat in your local mall and meet interesting people, break the ice and linkup with someone you like: setup a meeting or a date, start a party and share it on a map, or create a Geo chat with hundreds of people chatting with each other. It is all possible with LinkApp.
My Role
I was the only UX designer, I also took role of UX Researcher and Interaction Designer for this project. I worked closely with LetsLink LLC stakeholders, gathering their ideas and opinions, analyzing received data, performing user research and competitive analysis. Throughout the design process I worked closely with software engineers to make sure that every piece of the app will be implemented exactly as planned. Cooperation with each team member from day 1 is one of the key points that allowed us to complete project earlier, than planned.
Project Goals
- Implement efficient UX/UI solutions to create a simple yet comprehensive app that will help users to socialize.
- Build social environment and provide features to keep users active in the app
- Ensure that interaction with the app will be safe and inclusive for everyone
- Create ways to monetize the app without sharing users' data
Project Challenges
Since idea of LinkApp is to promote interaction between users in real life, I had to study and analyze how users will behave while using app in person.
Safety of users was my main focus during my work on the project. I had to make tools that will protect users online and offline, making sure that app is safe to use.
LinkApp is a location-based app and users have to provide access to their location. Privacy is a big concern for users and developers nowadays. I developed tools that allow users to use app without compromising their privacy and sharing any sensitive data.
Coronavirus made the process of user research more complex, and it took more time to complete, because of lockdowns that led to bigger time spending, and I wasn’t able to test all in-person use-cases
Phase 1: Define
I defined all stages of the design process to get full understanding of a product and setup a definition of MVP to come up with a solution that will help to formulate proper market fit and gather user insights.
Phase 2: Research
I started research from identifying target userbase of the application:
Target Users
- College Students
- People who recently moved to a new location and don't have connections.
- Anyone who wants to find new friends, or something to do locally
Interesteed Organizations
- Colleges and schools
- Companies that sell tickets for events
- Local businesses
- Local social organizations and religious communities
Competitive Analysis
I started researching the market and comparing LinkApp idea with other apps out there. LinkApp has similarities with every social networking app. I compared it with competitors that provide a comparable set of features: Facebook, Snapchat, and Tinder. Before starting an analysis, I made an assumption that there is no app that provides the same set of features and is centered on local social interactions through geo chats, events, and connecting with people around. During the analysis, I validated my assumption. While all mentioned apps provide some sort of similar functionality, neither of them has all these features in place centered around the map and radar-like search experience that results in local results posted by users. The closest competitor is Snapchat, which has a map feature, that shows the location of your friends, but a map is not the main feature of the app, and it only works for friends that you have already.
Interview Insights
To understand how users feel about the idea of the LinkApp and identify possible pain points during use of the app we interviewed people of different age groups and backgrounds, but the main focus was on students. Interviews assisted us in defining new features for the app, and we got interesting insights and surprising facts about possible use scenarios of LinkApp. You can see the most useful findings below:
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Key Findings
- Idea of "Linkup" feature automatically recommends places for meeting, and local business owners are willing to pay for their place to be recommended more proactively, or be suggested first.
- College campuses are the places, where LinkApp can be used as a streamlined solution not only for meeting new people, but for communications, and event management. Student organizations are willing to use LinkApp in future, if special features for students and educational organizations will be implemented.
- Female users are concerned about their safety, initially I was thinking about features like face verification and emergency button, but it is not enough. Female users would want to have group linkups, location tracking and linkup rating with reviews to get more information about user they are meeting with.
- The initial idea of "What's the Move" was to make a map-view mode allowing to search for events only through the map, but results of interviews showed that users feel like it lacks organization and it doesn't have a clear way to see a schedule of events that were saved. Dashboard view was chosen as a solution to this problem.
Organizing Ideas and Findings
Affinity Diagram was used to organize all the ideas and findings that were received from polls and interviews as well as from brainstorming and workshops with stakeholders:
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Phase 3: Design
Structure of the App
I created a scheme that maps structure of the app screens and interactions between them:
Wireframes
To validate proposed structure and assemble a skeleton of the layout for LinkApp, I created wireframes for each screen. Then I simulated interaction with the key features of the app to get better understanding of experience that user get while using this layout and feature as a whole.
Prototypes
To test interface ideas and generate useful feedback, I created high-fidelity prototypes, that were able to simulate all interactions with the app. Usability testing allowed to find flaws in the initial design, that were fixed and tested before moving to the UI design stage.
Finalizing Design
After prototypes were completed, I moved to the UI design stage, creating a design system, reusable elements to make UI design process easier and faster.
Finalized design had full prototype capabilities, allowing to test and simulate every aspect of the app use experience, which make it easier for stakeholders and development team to understand how app should operate.
Final design is a little different from initial wireframes, because during design process some functionality and style requirements were changed by the client.
Phase 4: Testing
Usability Testing Findings
We conducted usability testing with a group of 10 people and identified a few places, where users experience can be improved:
- Users use "What's the Move" page more often than "Link Up", so first screen after application launch was changed from "Linkup" to "What's the Move"
- Users weren't able to differentiate friends from other people on the map, to solve this problem we added a green circle around profile picture for friends.
- A modal window with quick settings for location and privacy was added to help users understand who can see their location on the map. To keep users safe, app will never show exact location to strangers, showing randomized approximated location instead.
Phase 5: Results
Because of the new approach to social communication that LinkApp provides, it quickly started to gain popularity among target audience, especially students.
Take a Look at LinkApp
