Host
Leading a discovery phase and validating product fit for an event planning app
Party Planning Made Simple
Host was an app idea inspired to to make party planning simpler and more engaging. It would allow planners to streamline efforts for their next gathering and keep everything organized. For this project, my client was looking for help conducting a discovery phase to confirm if there was interest in the market for the app and build out a prototype to test with potential users. I was responsible for user research, UX & UI for this project.
The main takeaways for me on this project were how to embrace iterative design and how to account for multiple user types with differing needs and tasks. Although the app didn’t end up moving past the discovery phase due to resourcing, it was a valuable exploration project for me and I continue to leverage learnings from my time working on it.
Design Goals
Design first app iteration
Validate priority features
Test prototype with users
Build design system
Business Goals
Validate product need
Establish product direction
Confirm user expectations
Key Design Elements
Create & Customize Party
Track RSVPs
Explore Feed
Organize Lists
User Problem
From planning menus to tracking RSVPs, hosting a social gathering can be a lot of work to organize and can take away from the fun of getting together.
Understanding The Environment & Potential Users
To set the framework for my research process and establish context, I considered the following questions. Based on these questions, I decided on a mix of goals and UX research methods that would best fit this project’s situation.
What stage is the product in? Product Discovery (no prior research or design completed)
Do I want to uncover how people feel or how they behave? To ensure I was designing the “right product”, I mainly wanted to focus on how users feel. After validation of product need, I can look at how users behave through usability testing.
Do I need quantitative or qualitative data? A mix of both. Qualitative data will uncover user pain points and quantitative data will help drive prioritization.
Research Goals
Learn how hosts currently plan parties and social gatherings
Discover pain points and problems of party and social gathering hosts
Highlight features that would excite or assist users on the Host app
Understand what other party/social gathering planning apps are offering and what’s trending in the industry
Methodologies
Primary: User Interviews & Surveys
Secondary: Competitive Analysis and Community Conversations
“When you can host and delegate well it makes everyone enjoy it more and helps people feel useful”
Delegating food and supplies takes effort but is worthwhile.
Research Insights
“Scheduling is a barrier and syncing everything for the party can take a long time”
Syncing with guests is slow and challenging.
“To be a good host, you have to make attendees feel at home which often means catering to different palettes”
Curating a menu that meets dietary restrictions & preferences is very important to hosts (and guests).
Exploring User Stories & Priorities
Taking research as a starting point, I aimed to define more clearly how the Host app could benefit both host and guest users. Through these definition exercises, my goal was to communicate who our users are, what their pain points are, and how our potential features might help them. At this point, my client and I collaborated on creating a prioritized list of features to make sure we had a roadmap ahead.
STORYBOARDs
personas
PRODUCT ROADMAP
Visualizing the New App Map
After understanding more on our users and which features we would be prioritizing, I was able to create an app map that would outline the initial sections of the app. This app map would serve as the overall landscape that would later be validated by individual user flows.
APP MAP
Creating an Engaging User Experience
After defining the overall app ecosystem, it was time to create user flows and wireframes for both types of users to outline how they would complete their main actions of the app. Although there was a lot of content to design, for our first user test I wanted to be strategic and focus first on the most foundational aspects of the app.
create a party (host)
invite guests (host)
explore party planning resources and ideas (host)
join a party (guest)
send RSVP (guest)
guest FlowHost flow
Mid-fi WIREFRAMES
Creating the Visual Identity
Throughout the project, I had also been working on creating the Host visual identity. We knew we wanted the brand to be fun and welcoming, just as a host imagines their ideal gathering. In combination with fun, we also wanted the brand to have a bit of retro feeling to it, so you’ll see some 70s inspired colors as well.
brand GUIDE
UI KitFirst Impressions, Pain Points & Opportunities
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Test ease of navigating through the app (how does it feel?)
Confirm benefit to users (does it solve a problem?)
Learn what the top areas of interest are within the app (what excites users?)
Explore ways to improve the app structure, layout, and content (how can it be improved?)
Observe any areas of confusion, hesitation or difficulty (what might hold them back from using it?)
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Confirmed need/purpose
High level good usability
Details and features available
Users understood patterns
Users liked setup of the to-do list
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Sign-up list hard to find
Expectation on invite timing
Menu location confusion
Confusion with swipe
Chat less beneficial than other features
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Content Previews
Further customization
More details on party/guest
To-do list enhancements
Further UI refinement
With wireframes and a prototype created, I then set to test the initial designs and get feedback from users. I utilized an affinity map to cluster findings and communicate test results.
Affinity Map
Iterating on Designs
From usability testing, I was able to highlight the confusion points and areas of improvement for initial designs. There was a clear need for more education and communication throughout the app as well as switching some interaction elements to make more sense for users.
High-Priority Revisions
Enhance the onboarding process by adding a guided tour
Add more visibility, education, and communication for sign-ups
Place more emphasis on polls and photo sharing
Embed inviting guests within the party creation process
Replace swipe on list items with tap/click to feel more natural
The Value of a Discovery Phase
This project (during 2020-2021) hit home for me as someone who was beyond excited to spend more quality time with friends and family post covid. Hosting a get-together can be a lot of work, but with the help of this app I was hoping that it could take an ounce of the stress away to get to the real purpose of getting together: connecting and having fun.
Although the app didn’t come to fruition and launch, I’m proud of my ability to oversee the full discovery phase from research to prototyping and think it was an important reminder of how valuable it is to get user feedback before introducing an idea to market.