Pacebuddy
My first UX project. My team worked on creating an app where you match with other people to socialize and exercise together. For example to go on walks, bicycle or run together.
Overview & context
This was the first UX project that I ever worked on as part of an Interaction design course at Stockholms Tekniska Institut. The project lasted from September 2020 until December 2020.
First thing during this course we got divided into groups of six and got a task of coming up with a business idea. This project was a way for us to get a holistic perspective of what a design process looks like while not diving too deep into any specific part of the journey. The course was very intense and we got new tasks for our projects after every lesson.
My team and I decided to try to create an app for people to match with each other and exercise together. We thought that it would be a great way to motivate people to exercise while at the same time meet new people.
The Team
The team consisted of myself and five other students who were all new to UX. Everyone seemed a bit lost at first but after talking some more we all got along well.
Since no one had any earlier experience of working with UX, we instead made good use out of everyone's individual life experiences and previous knowledge. I contributed to my team by bringing ideas to the table while still being open-minded. I also tried to keep my team in a good mood by producing a laugh every now and then.
The Challenge
I believe one of our biggest challenges with this project was that we were under constant time pressure from our teachers between each lesson. What made this an even greater challenge was the fact that everyone in my team was completely new to UX. But that also made it exciting and fun.
Our main challenge as of our business idea was to create an app where you match with other people with the purpose of working out. A major challenge throughout the process was that we had a balancing act between creating a successful product with a good USP and making it into just another dating app.
Understanding the user
The first thing we did after we had come up with our business idea was to think about which group of people we would like to target. Out of no research, we made guesses on potential target groups for our service. From there on we held interviews with three people from our primary selected target group and three people from a secondary selected target group.
Out of these interviews, we could confirm the interest of our service from both target groups. We also got some valuable information for us to understand the users and their perspective on things. Here are some key results from the interviews:
- The majority of the people we interviewed felt that common interests are an important thing to make it easier to meet someone new.
- Getting an inquiry from someone to exercise motivates them more than if they would have to do it themselves.
- The people we interviewed that lived far away from a large city didn’t feel as big of an interest in our service versus people living in large cities.
After considering the results we created a light user journey followed by some simple wireframes and a persona.
User Journey
Wireframes
Persona
Synthesizing the material
Now that we knew who our future users were, we started to discuss what parts and features we wanted the app to have.
From there on we created a sitemap of our MVP and a sitemap of a potential five-year plan. We also created a flowchart to get a common understanding of how the app should be structured.
Sitemap
5 year - Sitemap
Flowchart
Low-Fi prototypes
Now that it was time to create some more developed wireframes, our flowchart and sitemaps came to good use.
They reminded us of how the information architecture should look like and what it should include. This made it easy for us to create low-fi prototypes that we later were ready to test with potential users. I watched Figma tutorials on youtube to learn the basics as fast as I could. It was very fun and exciting and made me able to contribute to my team a lot.
Testing Lo-Fi prototypes with users
With our wireframes being in progress we created a couple of questions and tasks for our test persons. Each person in the team performed the test on someone they knew was at least close to our targeted group. We did the tests in person through Figma.
I did the test with a family member first and then a non-family member. We wanted the test person to create an account to then navigate through the app following our instructions. We wanted to answer some questions: Is it easy to navigate? Any problems creating an account? Is anything unclear? Do they understand the structure and how to use the app? We got some interesting results such as:
- “Which information will other people see when creating an account?”
- Not hard to navigate through the app
- The “Go-back-a-profile” button looks like a refresh button rather than a way to go back.
Wireframes & feedback
Hi-Fi prototype development
When we started creating hi-fi prototypes out of the information we had gathered we decided to divide our team into groups of two. This way we could work on different parts of the prototype at the same time to be more efficient.
I, together with a friend from the team mainly focused on prototyping the process of creating an account. We wanted it to feel easy and smooth to create an account. We did not want our users to have to fill in all their information in one specific frame so, instead we decided to add a new frame for every new information provided.
With this new idea, I thought it would be necessary to have some kind of visibility of system status to keep the user updated throughout the process. My team agreed and so I created a timeline for the process.
After being done prototyping the process of creating an account I assisted the rest of the group with their tasks. I also took care of making sure the interactions between all the frames and buttons were working as they should.
Results & impacts
After getting some feedback from our teachers we felt that we were done. The very last thing we did was to put together a design document and a presentation that we were going to share with both UX classes, all teachers and some people from real companies that were invited by the teachers.
Because we only had five minutes to present, we decided that just two people from the team should do it. I was one of the two that took on the challenge of presenting. I spoke about the concept of the project and also showed our prototypes. It went very well and we got some good feedback.
The course finished with a team exam. We got some minor things to remark on, but the teachers were very satisfied with our work overall.
Major learnings or points we wanted to call out
Common methods in ux.
I learned the basics of the UX process and many valuable common methods.
Feedback is key.
Getting feedback regularly was a major part of our journey and it helped out a lot. I have also learned to give feedback to others in a meaningful way.
To work agile.
I have learned how to work agile and accordingly to design thinking. These are very useful ways of working efficiently.
Figma.
I have learned the basics in Figma and I’ve realized how powerful of a tool this is for a UX designer. I can’t wait to try out Sketch as well.
Accessibility.
Being new to UX I had never even thought about accessibility. Now after this course I have realized how important it is.
Time management.
The fact that we got new tasks after each lesson made us realize how precious our time was. This made us come up with different ways of working more efficiently.
Lessons learned & going forward
This project was a great start to learning UX. After finishing this course, I realized how much I had learned. I went from having zero knowledge to understanding what UX actually is.
I learned many common methods that I definitely will use in upcoming projects in the near future. I have developed skills such as prototyping, interview techniques, creating personas, user stories, sitemaps and much more.
Right now I’m looking forward to the start of our upcoming course about User research, service design and Usability testing.