Role and Responsibilities: UX Researcher, UX Designer, Workshop Facilitator
Problem: In today’s landscape of social media, dating apps, and cultural pressures, it can be challenging to find the time to meet authentic people that turn into genuine friends. Why can’t it be like when we were kids, when we could walk up to someone, ask if they would be our friend, and boom, we’re playing on the playground?
Solution: Whirl takes the uncertainty of those awkward first meetings and provides a low stakes, fun way to virtually meet people before you hang out.
Impact: Users can meet others in a safe environment, building trust from first contact, that leads to lasting friendships.
Research
This project came out a discussion of how do we connect with people during the pandemic and in an increasingly digital world. Our ways of building friendships change as we age. As a child, this is done on the playground, or maybe during school. As we get older, these structured social pools tend to vanish. We wanted to know where an adult finds the spontaneity yet structure of the playground to develop true connections.
Our conversation led us to create Whirl, which aims to facilitate the spontaneity and meaningful first moments of connection needed for adults seeking online friendship in a safe and supported way. Since this is focused on human interaction, it was important to us that we do solid user research and define at least one persona to guide the project.
We started by gathering data through interviews and surveys, targeting young professionals newly out of an academic setting.
Core Objectives:
Understand how people make connections
Investigate what drives people to form friendships with others
Discover what tools people use to find, build, and nurture friendships
Understanding our user
We discovered that it is not only difficult for adults to make connections and form friendships, but that it is exceedingly more difficult to do this online, in a safe and meaningful way.
After a affinity workshop using qualitative data, we noticed some strong reoccurring themes. Comments relating to communication and how to bond to another person frequent, but the most common expressions were those addressing trust, fears, and bonding over shared activities.
Ultimately we found that users formed new friendships most easily around shared activities and value trust and authenticity, things that are challenging to promote via online interaction.
These themes allowed us to empathize with our users. There is a desire to meet new people, especially to find someone you can be vulnerable with. Those feelings are clouded by insecurities, awkwardness, and fear of rejection.
Our user is willing to meet someone if the stakes are low and they feel they have some control in the situation, but without any pressure for success.
Research Take-aways
People need someone they can trust and spend time with because they are otherwise on their own
People need an effective way of meeting other people online that are as authentic and genuine about connecting as they are because it is hard to ensure a genuine connection online.
People are willing and ready to share their favorite activities with a new person in an attempt to make a new friend
Understanding the Competition
As we began to specify Whirl’s functionality, it become important for us to under the competition and how they might be solving similar problems. By looking specifically at the strengths and weaknesses of Bumble BFF and other social networking apps we were able to identify what effective and ineffective practices look like.
Bumble BFF is part of the Bumble app family, having sprung from the very popular dating app. Since they have that background, their app really succeeds at aiding people create unique profiles that truly represent them. They not only provide tags for users to attach to themselves through easy to follow questionnaires, but they also give the user space to tell their own story. This allows us to hear a user’s voice and personality adding another level of authenticity to the profile. Having a background in the dating app world, they have leveraged their geolocation feature to point you to people close to you with similar interests. This makes the user responsible for whatever first interactions that they would like to make with others.
Bumble BFF, though easy for the user to navigate and personalize, comes across aggressive when looking at the overall experience. They persistently claim that “you will find your Best friend here!” They have even made it a part of their name. This puts pressure on the user to find their BFF, adding weight to the tasks at hand, potentially making this feel more like work or a date rather than an enjoyable experience. You must also initiate conversations in an unstructured environment, adding even more pressure on the user. Though this approach may work for some people, others may find it off putting.
Whirl seeks to ease this pressure by focusing on the first contact aspect of making a friend. We take the reins and provide you with the structure you need to succeed, but remove the responsibility for a user to make things work.
Artifacts
As we worked to find features and solutions to our user’s pain points, we had many discussions and workshops that generated the following artifacts. Through these we narrowed the types of features that we wanted to include. I lead the workshops and kept the team moving forward by setting daily tasks to move us forward.
Feature Prioritization
Through brainstorming workshops and analizng the current market the team imagined possible features for the app. The three best bets for us we:
Personalize a user profile: creates a space for the user to be seen the way they wish, making all user visible and hopefully instilling trust.
‘Whirlpools’ (chat rooms based on common interests): seeks to eliminate fears regarding the awkwardness of making the first move
In app and IRL activity suggestions: users can use these as icebreakers and when they decide they want to connect further, they can do so with share experiences, bolstering connection through shared interests.
Value Canvas
These core feature ideas were compared to established pains, gains, and tasks. Features were adjusted and connected to each attribute of the user’s experience. This brings focus and purpose to each feature, from the sign in screen to the structure of a chat session.
User Journey Map
Using our user persona we created a scenario where someone would use the app, such as a young professional moving to a new city with a remote job.
While this allowed us to envision our user going from a low, lonely place to a place where she found happiness in friendship, it also allowed us to begin imaging how her outer circumstance would inform her inner journey using the app.
This is also where conversations of app abusers and stranger danger truly manifested. Due to time, we had to table the conversation to focus on what we could accomplish. Security is still a major concern for any online social activity.
User Flow
Understanding the outer and inner journey of our user allowed us to create a technical relationship of the core features on which their journey would depend.
This single flow represents a user joining a ‘whirlpool’, viewing other personalized profiles, and deciding to interact.
Logo and Name
The name and logo were developed based on a team conversation when analyzing the qualitative date. We began using the analogy that there is an ocean of people in this world, yet it’s hard to find a place to rest. We all want our own group or bubble so that we feel safe. At this point in our research we knew we wanted to focus on the first contact moments of becoming friends.
Whirl came from the ideas whirls pools and “giving it a whirl”. Whirlpools are created when different water currents meet and feed each other. This spoke to the idea of creating new friendships through meeting other not typically in your social circle.
Solution : Focus on First Contact
Wireframe and User Tests
The first iteration focused heavily on profile creation. This was to encourage an accurate digital representation of a person apart from photos to distinguish it from hook up apps. We also thought to use the information and tags that the user created to aid suggesting other users and activities.
Results:
user’s felt onboarding and profile creation was far too long. Felt it was too soon to get so personal, unless it’s a dating app
jargon was confusing
Users shared concerns about security
Clickable Prototype
Adjustments were made primarily to the user flow.
onboarding was shortened to a couple of screens with base questions
profile customization was optional after creating an account
profile customization, though optional, unlocked other features in the app.
user created tags made evaluating other users scannable
Outcomes
ULTIMATELY, THE PROBLEM IS THAT:
“PEOPLE LOOKING FOR COMPANIONSHIP NEED A TRUSTWORTHY WAY OF MEETING REAL PEOPLE ONLINE BECAUSE IT IS HARD TO MAKE SURE THAT AN ONLINE CONNECTION WILL GROW INTO AN IN-PERSON FRIENDSHIP.”
The goal for WHIRL is to be a guide for those seeking new friends. Making a promise of friendship out of a digital environment is unrealistic as there’s only so much an app can do.
What we can do is encourage proper meetings that allow for trust - create a fun way to begin talking about what a pair or group will do together for the first time - and finally provide them the tools to make time for one another through activities which can solidify a new friendship.
With this project, our team had many discussions about ethics and the nature of humanity. There are those who seek to be genuine, and I think this application was designed with those people as the target audience. The truth is, there are those out there looking to take advantage of others and are willing to be deceptive for personal gains. How does one monitor product misuse when the primary tenant of your product is trust? This is the major issue with all social media apps, and I’m not sure there is currently a solution.
Moving Forward:
Users add their own events
Filter/rank activities
View events on a map
Heightened security features
Team up with sociologists to discuss and problem solve ethical issues