Fostering communities and increasing app engagement by creating safe spaces for students to interact with one another.
CLIENT
Connou is an early-stage startup dedicated to increasing student success and retention for universities worldwide by supporting students’ social and educational needs. They do so by connecting students based on shared activites.
INFO
Role
Lead UX Designer and Researcher on the project
Team
2 developers, 1 sales/account manager, 1 UX Designer & me
Timeline
4 months
PROBLEM
Students are not transitioning their Connou connections into real life interactions, which could negatively impact student success and lower Connou’s impact on student communities.
GOAL
Understand what is preventing users from meeting their connections in person and develop a way to support students in nurturing the connections they create in the app.
THE PROCESS
UNDERSTAND
Meeting and understanding university students is key to designing valuable experiences for them.
With the help of our sales representative, we reached out to students, not only our app users, but students from other universities as well to get a more diverse mix of local and international students as well as the ones studying at European and American universities.
Many insights were gathered and we managed to understand the habits and daily life of the students, as well as the social dynamics on both European and US universities.
The key findings from talking to students came from understanding HOW and WHERE students become friends on campus.
The HOW
Connou already connects students based off of their common interests, giving them a foundation to build their relationships on, covering the HOW.
The WHERE
But, in order for these relationships to blossom, we also need to provide our users with the WHERE. Meaning, if we want to succeed in our mission, we need to create circumstances where students can meet other students in a safe space.
Gen Z students are very technology dependent, but they still prefer nurturing their friendships in-person, especially after being stuck inside during the pandemic.
The Customer POV
HMW
How might we empower students to transition their online connections into real-life experiences?
IDEATE
As a starting point, we wanted to understand what our direct and indirect competitors are doing to solve similar issues.
4/7
Contain Event Features
7/7
Have Group Chats
Groups are a great way to create a feeling of community and support, and student very often use them to look for housing and academic support.
60%
Students prefer meeting people in larger groups over one-on-one experiences.
Moreover, our sales representative pointed out that academic support as well as student well being is one of the key priorities that our potential customers have.
During our user interviews, we asked students if they prefer to meet new people one on one or in larger groups. We were already playing with the idea of expanding Connou to include groups, and we wanted to validate it.
Developing a group & events feature inside Connou seemed like a natural way to go. But, for a startup, these two features could take a while to develop, so the team got together and prioritized the features using the MoSCoW method.
The final decision came to developing just the Groups feature as a solid foundation to support the growth of the Connou communities in the future.
DESIGN
Mid Fidelity
Keeping the whole team engaged in the design process could potentially be challenging, that’s why we started with mid fidelity wireframes to showcase our vision to the team and get their feedback.
In order to make sure the feedback from users is as relevant as possible, we decided that we needed more realistic wireframes than the ones created in the mid-fidelity phase. Creating the high fidelity designs meant taking into consideration team feedback and iterating on some UI components.
High Fidelity
KEY FLOWS
We designed three key flows we wanted to validate with users.
Joining a group
We needed a simple flow for users to browse and join different groups their peers created.
Creating a group
If we are giving our users the ability to create their own groups, we need to make sure to make that process as simple as possible and encourage them throughout this journey.
Moderating a group
Community management and group moderation is very important in making sure that our communities are safe and respectful. We wanted to address any concerns users might have regarding how to keep the group they create safe and
TEST
What worked
1.
All users showed excitement regarding the group feature.
2.
They highlighted the importance of being able to invite their Connou connection into the groups, saying that this will make it easier to make plans with friends since they won’t have to create groups in different apps like they do now.
3.
Users were successful in creating their own groups and easily followed the group set up flow.
What didn't work
1.
Users struggled to access the group chats they already joined. They looked for those groups in the group tab first and not in the chat as we expected.
2.
It was not clear for them if the groups are permanent or temporary.
3.
They expressed that there is a lack of information on when the group will meet, they wanted to have an option to schedule a time and place to meet with the rest of the members.
After talking to the users, it became obvious that Events might be more relevant to them than we thought.
While Groups provide users with a more permanent access to their community, students also want use Connou to plan outings and hangouts where they could meet even more people.
GROUPS BECAME COMMUNITY
After reflecting on the user tests and consulting the dev team, Groups became Community. Community includes both permanent groups that reflect campus organizations such as sports or the "Greek life", and events that allow students to create temporary happenings where they can meet like-minded people.
This changes required some restructuring to the user flows and screen designs.
Navigation
Users can now use the tab menu to navigate between Events and Groups
My Communities
An easy way to access and overview every community joined.
New flow for creating Communities
When creating a new community, users can now choose if they want to plan an Event or start a Group.
Event overview
If they want to participate in an event, user can review all the relevant information before joining.
FINAL FEATURES
Joining an event
Creating an event
Safety options
LEARNINGS
