Togathre
Social Events for studentS
Lead UX/Ui Designer
Native iOS App
One Year project
My role
Lead designer in charge of redesigning of an MVP created by the engineering team that had poor testing results.
Managed a team of two other designers, interacted directly with company founder, worked with engineering, pitched to investors.
Launched beta product and testing program
Created design system, grid standards, made wireframes, mock-ups, prototypes, established design culture, took part in hiring process, flow charts, decision trees, did remote ux research and testing creating scripts and running tests, ran focus groups.
The problem(s)
In this new hybrid virtual and in-person world, students are looking for easy ways to reconnect with friends and organize activities and hangouts with other like-minded students.
Legacy tech platforms such as Meetup, Eventbrite, and Facebook are not meeting Gen Z’s social planning needs.
Meeting the needs of four different users on the platform.
The start
When I came onto the project, the main problem had already been identified and round one of usability testing had just been completed but showed lots of problems. Users were struggling with a lot. I was asked to create onboarding to solve the usability complaints, but the problems were deep. To get the team on track, we began doing visual competitive analysis, a color study, and mood boards to prepare for creating a robust style guide. Other immediate actions we took were to implement a grid and the usage of components.
We also quickly switched to focus on dark mode as user research showed Gen Z LOVES dark mode.
The Original Design (not mine)
The Pivot
The original UI was mostly abandoned. Some of the information architecture was retained while additional features were created. We focused on more of a social media UI style feed instead of the original design, which seemed to be more like a media-selecting product ala Hulu, Netflix, etc.. The goal was to simplify the interactions needed to consume the most possible content rapidly. Also, very little metadata was viewable in the original UI style. Event creation was a tedious unenjoyable process and in general, is something we view as one of the biggest hurdles we face in creating an enjoyable experience.
At this point there was a strong push to keep momentum within the team going and deadlines were very quick. Designs were created rapidly with the hope of sustaining the buzz.
A set of lo-fi designs and prototypes were quickly created and tested.
oops, not mvp enough - but I wanna play with ar :(
I think any of us in the start-up world have done this before. You think it’s minimalist, but nope, you gotta do way less. Our developer consultant loved what was made, but our budget did not. Features were removed and we pushed toward the first hi-fi prototypes and testing.
The goal of bringing joy to the event creation flow through AR will have to wait.
First hi-fi and a/b testing
Okay fine, I’ll strip out a bunch of stuff. I also learned about MMP for the first time. So down the line we will create MMP, MVP, then V1.
It’s okay! My dreams will happen eventually.
Testing was inconclusive for a winner but both designs received iterations.
focus on accessibility and restyling - oops, looking too techy
In response to industry trends and usability testing, hi-fi iterations were completed with a focus on improving contrast and increasing readability and accessibility. Also, this stylization allows the accent color to have a more prominent effect. All students 9th grade and up should easily be able to use this product.
All those user states
There are a lot of use case scenarios for us. We are at the beginning of development. For “Verified Host” users, we decided to create a UI that dramatically differs from the normal user state, to decrease confusion for users who have access to both states.
Struggles and next steps
Currently Togathre is in beta testing and all current minimum desired features are available. Through testing we discovered there needed to move the sequencing of onboarding to being activated by actions within the app and a small contextual onboarding to help inform the users of what the product is. The marketing messages were also not giving the user a clear understanding of what the product is doing.