Circle App Creation

Circle, which is a hypothetical app that allows students and commuters to stay informed about all the latest events happening and to chat and meet up with people based on their preferences, was created in one week for a Design-a-thon contest.

My team and I entered in First Place in the Design-a-thon for our uniquely branded app, research & design process, UX story telling skills, and more.

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Timeframe: April 2022 (1 week)                                            

Team & Roles:

‍Maytar Ben-Biniamin - Design & Team Lead

Muhammad Razi Hussain - Research Lead

Taaha Siddiqui - UX Writer

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I led my team and guided them on each step of the process to create a user-centered design. I kept the team on track in an organized and timely manner. In addition to managing the team and assigning them each a role, I was the head of the design portion. I have the eye and feel for colors and design choices that also align with what works best for the target audience.

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The Problem

The main problem that led us to creating a hypothetical app such as this one, is that commuters struggle to connect with others. It can be difficult enough building friendships as a student, let alone as a commuter.

According to the Rutgers Commuters Students Association, commuting students save approximately $8,000 dollars in room and board fees. Being a commuter and not being able to afford the fees shouldn't affect your college experience and shouldn't stop you from making friends. Students living on campus may hesitate to become friends with commuters since it wouldn't be as easy to spontaneously go to campus events.

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The Research

Among 91 participants...

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We asked our audience to offer suggestions on how commuters would be given more opportunities to connect with others, here's what they had to say...

"have events for commuters, especially in the beginning of the semester"

"encourage more events to meet each other, maybe during the day as it may be more difficult to attend at night for commuters"

"more social events with general themes, such as study groups... study groups is how I made most of my friends"

"something like a commuter lounge"

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Our research shows that students are requesting more events to be held on campus. However, after interviewing some students who are regularly on campus, we found that the University holds a variety of social and networking events throughout the semester. Most students are not aware of these events since there is no unified channel or platform through which they could learn about the upcoming events.

Most career and networking events, such as job fairs and alumni meetups, are announced through Rutgers Handshake. The getINVOLVED website is used to find events, organizations and news articles. Whereas, most of the organizations and clubs on campus advertise and market their events through social media, usually on Instagram and GroupMe.

We designed an app where students don't have to keep track of different platforms to know when and where things are happening. We believe it is better to unify all event finders into one app so students don't have to constantly be checking different websites and apps to locate events.

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The Solution

Easily Finding Events, Club Meetings, Hangouts, And Meet Others That Are Attending

• To provide all this to students, we decided to create an app since almost every student, if not all, has a smartphone.

• Colleges already have newsletters to keep students informed about events, although it gets lost in all the other emails they may be receiving.

• The solution to commuters lacking social interactions is to have all events, club meetings, hangouts, study groups, and so much more posted on Circle to ensure you will never miss an event!

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Discover Who Else Is Going

Beside having every event posted to this platform, there will also be a feature to see who else is attending and you will be able to message one another.

• Who's Going - Find out who else is attending the same event as you

• Comments - Start discussions and ask questions

• Profile - Click the profile image of someone you find interesting and check their page out!

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It's Easier To Break The Ice Online

• Direct Messaging - Strike a conversation with someone you have things in common with

• Once you start chatting with someone on our app, you can then go to events together to prevent the feeling of being alone in a new place.

• Talking to people online may be easier for some people before meeting them in person.

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Scope

• Creating an app which includes every event happening on campus will decrease student frustration of not knowing when anything is happening. We believe that students will be happy with having event announcements all in one app, which is easy to access from almost anywhere.

• Students will feel less alone when they see other people are registered to the same event as them, as well as having the ability to meet them before hand, simply by sending a message. Even if students don't interact prior to the event by messaging each other, at least they will see familiar faces and will feel more inclined to go over to them.

• We expect most users of this app to be in the same boat, having a difficult time connecting with others or creating a social life for themselves. We expect Circle to increase student interaction and provide them with a way to make friends in a setting that feels less daunting and less awkward.

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Constraints

Before moving on to the design phase of the project, we asked ourselves what are the limitations of this project. We needed to understand what's within our control and what's not. Would an app be a feasible option to solve this problem? We figured there were four main constraints that we had to consider.

1.   We cannot change the university's COVID policies.

2.   We cannot create more commuter lounges by ourselves.

3.   We cannot change class times and course curriculums.

4.   We only had a week to complete this entire project.

Once we understood our limitations, we agreed that an app would be the best option to solve this problem. So we set out to solve the problems that were within our control.

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User Flows

Below are the user flows for the key actions in the app.

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Information Architecture

Below is the information architecture I developed based on the user flows. It was designed during the initial stages of design.

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Low-Fidelity Prototype

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Hi-Fidelity Prototype & Final Product

TRY IT FOR YOURSELF!

VIEW PROTOTYPE HERE.

💻 In-person vs Remote 🔒 Top-notch Security 🔍 Filter Your Search ➡️ Find Out Who Else Is Going 📍 Event Information ⚠️ Vital Event Information 📅 Create Your Own Event 💬 Direct Messaging 👩🏽 View Friends Profiles 🧑🏻 Setup Your Own Profile ✅ Event Confirmation

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Typography, Colors, & Components

Takeaways & Reflections

Creating a product from start to finish in one week is not easy, there is so much to do in such little time. It is a big accomplishment for me that I was able to lead a team in a one week design project, where we entered in FIRST PLACE! I am always learning new things in the process of creating UX case studies, such as the processes of UX and how to successfully work in a team.

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Gather more data from the start. When we first started this project, we created a survey asking questions about the importance of friendships and about the behavior of students regarding their social life. I think we could have benefitted from asking more questiknos in our survey to gather more information to better understand the needs and wants of students.

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Never assume. We tried our best to empathize with the commuters and learn as much as possible about their problems to design accordingly. If we spent less time assuming, we could have focused more of our time on interviewing commuters to better understand what a perfect design could look like to fit their needs.

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Test early and iterate. Since this was completed in only one week, it was difficult to make time to test our design early on and iterate based on the feedback from the tests. Increasing the amount of time put towards testing and iterating would have allowed us to explore different solutions and design every aspect of the product with intention and strong reason.

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