JigSaw
The matching application helps people to find others who have the same goal or interest to go to the event together.
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Jigsaw found the connection between humans in this area should not be restricted to romance, business, or normal friendship. Common interests or goals will make people closer. We make it possible for strangers who have the same interest to break the limitation of strangeness to achieve their dream together - no matter it is a big event or small party, you always will find someone with you.
Context
ITGM 709 - Visual Interface / Information Design
10 Weeks
My Role
We have four teammates in our group, all of us are
UX designers, UI designers,and product designers.
Me as UX Designer mainly did
- User Research
- Data Analysis
- Wireframe
- User Test
Challenge for me
Solving real human-centered problems based on user's needs from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and practicing the storytelling skills through video promotion. We need to find users to share their personal stories, in order to understand the painpoint and develop a product based on their emotional needs.
01.Concept
People always need to attend social event no matter it is related with their interest or daily demand. Sometimes the company of friends is important. However, friends cannot accompany with each other everyday. Compare to force friends to do something that they do not want to do, there should be a method to unite people who have same intererst or goal, to finish a certain event together.
CONNECTION
Social
Overcome people’s loneliness
Switch from online and offline network
Check out concept video here!
We started with a problem about how people will feel loneliness in modern life. As human beings lived in Metropolis with highly developed technology, it is easy for us to have different interests with our friends. Or, in my case, all of my friends are in different cities, even countries. However, sometimes you might need to go to certain events with someone comes along. In order to not feel "lonely".
So, we started to think...
How might we connect people who share SAME interest to do things together, and eventually build connections between them？
02.RESEARCH
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in partnership with The Economicst, a survey on how adult feels about loneliness and isolated.
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One in Five Americans always or often feel lonely or socially isolated in both PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY, and FINANCIALLY.
The main reason is the Lack of Meaningful Connection with others.
02_01. INTERVIEW
To verify the problem related to people's needs, we went to public spaces in our town to talk with people there. In one of the largest public parks Forsyth Park, we were able to reach 20 people to interview. We collected their interest and their story about going events and asked their needs on someone's accompanies.
We wanted to understand:
Their personal feeling when they attend events alone.
If they need someone to go to events together, what's kind of event will it be?
What's kind of emotional support do they want when they try to find online friends?
Is there any consideration if they will meet an online friend in real life?
We used the interview to prove:
People do have demand to find others to attend the event together, and they prefer those who have the same hobby and interest.
Questions that need to clarify:
1. What kind of events do people need some others to accompany with them to finish?
2. How to increase their safety when meeting someone that never met before? (feeling and actual safety issue.)
02_02. SURVEY
Based on questions from the stories we collected from interviews and friends, we developed the survey to assure our problem through qualitative data. We focused on problems such as activities type, the reason that they want to go to events with others. To identify which direction we want to develop a solution for our users.
People's demand on company is high. Social media's connection is important but people also need to meet each other in person.
We improved our application in two directions:
1. Personal Profile: Safety
2. Tag/Classification development
02_03. Competitive Analysis and Persona
Besides the data above, I did the competitive analysis to observe other matching applications on the market. I made a quadrant chart to indicate different functions and purpose of them: Freedom or restriction, offline and online communication. Most of dating applications now are focused on freedom and making friends online.
So, we saw the opportunities between offline and online areas, where there are some restrictions to improve the usability of applications and safety.
We created personas based on whom we targeted with to create empathy. These three personas will help us to synthesize problems in next step.
03.Synthesis and IDEA
03_01. Storyboard
Firstly, let's check our user's journey!
03_02. Problem Tree
Connection
know where to go but
have no one
want to go with them.
Want to go out but
do not know where
to go and also do
not want to go there
alone.
Solution
We will match people who have the same demand as you.
We developed a function that if you enter the category of event or date, location. The system will recommend the other people who either already have things to go or people who also do not know what to do for you to hang out.
Dressed up but friend flake out
on you.
People who want to do some certain events with others but hard to find anyone who shares the same interest accompany with him/her.
03_03. Ideation and Sketches
• Match and Match Result
• Chat
• Real-Time Location
• Security
04.DESIGN
04_01. 1st Round of Usability Test
The paper prototype gave me flexibility in doing usability test, we received the following feedback regarding our models:
1. The personal profile page should be more information and detailed.
2. The match results page needs to be clearer.
3. Add a rating system to increase the security and user's experience on choosing people.
04_02. Information Architecture
04_03. Lo-Fi Prototype
Lofi prototype enabled us to do the 2nd round of usability test. We designed the page about letting users to match their mates in a simple and clear pages, where users can insert information that they known about events, and try to match the best results for them.
We want to design a smooth experience from:
when user start to match
Pick the right mate
Start to chat
Find the extcatly location of each other
Follow up comments and security issues
04_04. User Cases
05.DELIVER
06.Reflection
This project went very well. I learned a lot from it. I practiced how to put myself into user's shoes, to think what are their needs and what they value. Mostly, we used our value as a designer, to design a product that fully fits into the problem we found. In the end, I was able to use storytelling(Concept Video) to introduce our product.
However, we still have some restrictions: our survey and interview focused on our city, Savannah, which is a relatively small town. So the data might contain bias.
And we had a rough time developing the hi-fi prototype so after two years of finish this project. I started to redesign the hi-fi prototype as a practice.
And here are my working in progress:
