Mobile Design

Rendezvous

Overview

I chose to design an IOS mobile application for my final project in my mobile design course at DePaul University. The application, Rendezvous, is a mobile navigation application that finds the optimal meet up spot for a group of up to six users while providing other recommendations for the meet-up spot.

Problem

Often when meeting up with friends, it can become difficult to choose the perfect location to meet up. In many cases, the indecisiveness can result in the group of friends not meeting up or takes hours to solve. As a result, I wanted to find a better way to help a group of friends decide on a meet up spot.

Solution

The solution is an iOS mobile application called Rendezvous that allows users to plug in their location and provides the optimal meet up spot for a group of up to six users. The application allows users to find the best meet-up spot for a group of friends in any situation. The application can be used in various scenarios such as deciding where to meet-up with friends or when you get lost in a big festival. Rendezvous will provide recommendations to users on a potential meetup spot while providing users with the shortest route to the meet up spot.

Interviews

I conducted 5 interviews with millennials who often go out with friends and like to use applications to find potential meetup spots to understand their needs and frustrations. Through a synthesis, I was able to extract several pain points while searching for meetup spots.

Pain points

1. Spend hours researching and planning

2. Lack of information for certain places

3. Friends bailing

4. Remain in budget for everyone in

   group

Competitive Analysis

Existing products addressed some of the pain points, but there wasn’t a single product that addressed all

User Flow

The app was intended to support the key function of finding a meet up spot for a group of up to six friends.

High-Fidelity Prototype

View upcoming meetups
The meetup page allows users to view their upcoming meetups and friends’ meetups as long as they’re made public. To view friends meetups, users can easily tap on the friends tab. At the bottom of the screen, users can create a new meetup by tapping on the new meetup button. It’s accessible for users and is easily visible.

Choose an option
Users have two options: (1) have the application find the meetup spot or (2) recommend a meetup spot if the user has one in mind already. Based on interview findings, participants revealed that sometimes they had difficulty findings meet up spots that everyone would agree on. They also mentioned that they do recommend meet up spots, so I decided to still include this action in the app.

Choose the type of meeting
After inviting friends, the user will be asked to select the type of meeting they’re planning on having with their friends. This will ensure that the recommendations the app provides align to the user’s type of meeting.

Invite friends
Users can invite up to six friends from their friends list, existing groups or contact list. The application will then use everyone’s shared location to determine the best meetup spot.

View recommendations
Users can view the recommendations on the map to determine the distance from their current location. They can tap on the icon to view the address of the recommended meet up spot.

Detailed list of recommendations
Users can swipe up on the tab bar located at the bottom to view more information on the recommendations provided. They can view the rating, hours, distance, and more of the recommendations.

Vote on a meet up spot
After viewing the recommendations, the group of friends can vote on a place by switching to the vote tab. This will help users decide on a place to meet with their friends!

View created meeting
Users can now view their created meeting and message the people invited to the meeting on this screen. If it’s a public post, it will allow other friends to view the meeting and can even request to join!

Reflection

Rendezvous was my first independent UX research and design project. I decided to work on this specific topic as it was a relevant topic in my life. Throughout the intensive research and design process, I found one method particularly useful. It was usability testing after designing the hi-fidelity prototype. These tests played an important role in helping me validate my ideas and evaluate my design.

For the next steps:

Validation: Using both quantitative data and qualitative data to better validate my design. There are some important key metrics to look at if the app was ever built: active users, retention rate, task completion rate, page views.

Monetization strategy: Rendezvous could do paid collaborations with places and recommend the experience only after the team experiences it. That way, Rendezvous is making sponsored recommendations that they truly believe their users will enjoy. This is important so that user trust is not affected.

Scalability: Rendezvous has potential to serve user groups in different scenarios. For example, large music festivals, sport venues, museums, etc can benefit from Rendezvous’s features. This means that there needs to be more testing and research before implementing these features.