Join & Joy

A mobile app designed to eliminate social anxiety and help users meet new friends by attending events.

Join and Joy is here to help you grow more connections while enjoying the events.

The Challenge

Social anxiety happens when people relocate to a brand new place where no friends or family are nearby. Join and Joy creates opportunities to help people learn new knowledge and meet new friends by participating in events.

The challenge Join and Joy is facing now is that the business team has identified the number of people who say they are going to an event is significantly higher than the actual number of people who actually attend. The location data from Join and Joy shows that, on average, 20% of people who say they’re going do not end up attending events. To decrease the no-show rate, Join and Joy is willing to offer incentives for users to be committed to attending events, but the incentives need to be cost-effective.

GOALS

Eliminate social anxiety by connecting users and create a solution to increase the conversion of event attendees to accepted invites.

ROLE

User Research
User Experience Design
Brand Design

SCOPE

Personal Project
IOS App Design

DURATION

3 Weeks

TOOLS

Figma

ROLE

User Research
User Experience Design
Brand Design

SCOPE

Personal Project
IOS App Design

DURATION

3 weeks

TOOLS

Figma

Research

‍Understand what we have (the company)

The structure of the MVP and the challenge has already been identified. Next I will need to gather more data from the business requirements and what needs to be changed. So I used the Knoster Model to assist in understanding the desired changes on both sides of the business and the users. I found out that Join and Joy only provides the service up to the registration. and the process lacked of after-sales service which is one of the important elements in user experience.

Understand what they have (the competitors)

I dived deeper into the competitor analysis to determine what made their products successful. I discovered that searching by date function wasn’t quite commonly used in the competitors’ apps which could stand out more and provide a better and easier user experience to browse more events.

Understand what the users needs (User-Center Design)

During the research, I discovered that there wasn’t any incentive for users to be committed to attending the event even when the event is free. In the other words, users know they have nothing to lose on the free events, so users do no care if they show up to the events. But if it's a paid event, they will make sure to clear the schedule so they can attend without interruption.

Empathize

User centricity is an important consideration in a design process.

I decided to use Jobs To Be Done method to generate the user flow and users needs, then identified the priorities by using MoSCoW Prioritization. By using these methods I found four key takeaways for user requirements.

‍

Key takeaways for user requirements

Users

Define Target Audience

‍Characteristics:‍

32-55 years old
The user base is in equal split between men and women
Use phone and desktop applications equally
Middle class
Recently relocated to a new city

Build A Persona

‍Frustration
Doesn’t remember the date of the event and mistakenly made another plan on the same day of the event.

‍Needs
Wants to join events to meet friends and grow his connection.

‍Goal
Gets reminded in advance when an event is upcoming.

Define problems

How might we...?

HMW decrease the no-show rate?
Ideas: Penalty for no show, charge a registration fee, several reminder alerts.
‍
HMW create an incentive for users to be committed to attending events?
Ideas: Provide points as cashback when the users attend the events.
HMW make the process of attending more convenient?
Ideas: Simplified join process within 1 minute, label the keywords of the event detail.
‍

Sketches

Initial key screens in sketches

Wireframe

Initial key screens in sketches

Learnings From The Guerilla Usability Testing

Natural habit to look at top when trying to search

I put “scan QR code to add a friend” in the top bar to test if I could stop users from tapping on the top bar when trying to search. It turned out all the participants still tapped on the top bar without reading. I learned that because the past software always placed search position on top, it became an unbreakable rule where search position is always on the top.

The calendar on the home page delivered the wrong message

The home page is the place for users to find all the entertainment, so seeing a calendar on the landing page will make users confused about it's purpose, and led to a negative experience on the landing screen.

Information exceeds the cognitive load

Reducing steps in a process was a great UX approach to simplify the user experience. But displaying too much information on a screen not only causes memorization overload but also makes it easy to neglect the information.

Prototype

High Fidelity

Initial key screens in high fidelity

Usability Testing

‍Testing identifies insights for improvement

Design isn’t finished until someone tests it, so usability testing in a design process is necessary. The first round of usability testing has a 75% success rate, and the tests showed that the user flow was very intuitive and easy to follow for users. Even Android users were able to follow along without questions in the IOS interface. However, I also discovered some critical and minor findings in the testing for the next iteration.

Iteration

01 Critical Finding

Demonstrating by making users empathize the impact to the event hosts

All the users were willing to pay the refundable deposit and thought the purpose was understandable. But I still noticed some friction on this step when users saw the event was free, but still got asked to pay the fee in advance.

I decided to ask users to step into the hosts’ shoes, so they could understand how it would feel when they were ghosted. The empathy helps increase the attendees’ willingness to pay the deposit fee.

‍

01 Minor Finding

Rewording creates a better impact on the same message.

During the testing, a user mentioned registration fee didn't sound like it was refundable. This concern could cause a negative experience, so I reworded the registration fee to deposit which decrease its confusion of definition.

Join and Joy Prototype

TRY PROTOTYPE

The Final Solutions

Advance Deposit. Cashback Promotion. Double Reminders.

Advance Deposit

The deposit will be refunded if a user shows up to the event

Users are welcome to attend any events that interest them, but no-shows are always frustrating to hosts. Join and Joy understands this struggle and explains the purpose of charging a refundable deposit by making attendees empathize with the feeling that no one likes to be ghosted.

The advance deposit will automatically be refunded in 3-5 business days after the users attend their RSVP events. If the users choose not to attend the event for any reason, they can get the deposit back if they cancel the ticket 24 hours before the event starts. But if the users choose not to show up without a successful cancellation, the advance deposit will not be refunded. This strategy can successfully stop users from ghosting and decrease the no-show rate.

Cashback Promotion

Cashback program encourages users to attend more events

The cashback program is an affordable and cost-effective incentive that can increase higher engagements in a business. The cashback reward can be applied to offset the price of attending future events, and encourage more attendees to join and more event organizers to host.

This strategy will trigger users to be committed to attending the events and help to convert one-time users to loyal users.

Double Reminders

Two reminders ensure users remember the upcoming events

Reminders keep us focused on the track, but the default calendar function only alerts users on the event of the day which can cause users to accidentally make another plan prior without realizing it would overlap with the existing plan.

Two reminders will allow users to have effective communication of the upcoming events, also help users determine their availability of attending the events. This strategy will increase the conversion of the event attendees to the accepted invites and prevent no-shows.

What I have learned from Join and Joy

01 LEARNING

The simple word “Done” is the end of a task

Feedback is a technique that tells users the task has been processed, and a “Done” button delivers a clear message that the task has been completed.

02 LEARNING

The count-down function provides a more fluent experience

With the count-down message, users no longer need to pause or spend extra time to figure out how much time is left before they can cancel their tickets.

03 LEARNING

The primary button with “Share” brings more revenue to the business than “Edit RSVP”

Editing an RSVP should be easy for users to target, but the main goal of the business is to increase revenue by having more engagement, so share should be more accessible than edit RSVP.

More information?

LinkedIn Me!

Would like to know more in detail of how I discovered the insights to improve Join and Joy?

Send a message to me and I would be more than happy to go through a 15 minutes presentation with you.

Detail in:

JTBD
User Research
Competitor Analysis
Material requirements from the business and the users
Usability Findings

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