Mosh Social
Jared K. Bateman
2023
Project Overview
Nearly 40% of millennials spend money they don’t have in order to keep up with peers. For this project our desire was to create an app to streamline planning for activities and events for friends while also addressing the different budgeting restraints on each member of the created group and scheduling. Our motivation is to better enable groups and friends to navigate different schedules and budgets. A driving desire to aid particularly young professionals who are struggling with planning and organizing their rendezvous on activities that they can all have an opportunity to vote on so they can maximize their social side of life.
Conducted competitor analysis with 2 direct competitors (Hangtime and Linkmood) as well as 2 indirect competitors (Messenger and Splitwise). We did an analysis of their features, compared competitive advantage, strengths, weaknesses, and customer reviews. After identifying strengths and weaknesses of the competitors allowed my team to focus our efforts on building on what works and improving on what does not.
From there we constructed an interview plan that we used to talk to individuals within our target group in person. We talked to young adults who are establishing themselves, people who are generally time rich and socially active to better understand the wants and needs for whom we are designing for.
These are some of the responses that really stood out in the interviews. Respondents felt like it was difficult to get solid plans that would stick if they even were to make plans at all. Budgeting was a big issue on top of what plans were being thrown around, the question of how much the activity may be was a repeated concern.
On top of the interviews, we also conducted a survey via social media and charted responses. For me one of the biggest takeaways from the survey was that scheduling was an even bigger factor than budget for an activity, I knew it was more important, but I had assumed that the budget would be a closer 2nd place than it ended up being. There also was not a huge take away about the activities that people wanted to participate in, they wanted a say or an idea of what to do but the primary concern was the scheduling.
The research was conducted to understand the end user better and framing the problem to be explored and solved.
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While creating an app that is universally appealing and a useful socially scheduling tool, this again is going to be geared toward those with time to fill, who are active with similar schedules and budgets.
Creating a User Persona helped us understand and empathize with the end-users as well as gain perspective who I am designer for.
Sarah Walker is a young, educated professional with a career. She's a free-spirited socialite. She does love her personal time but when it is time to cutloose and have some fun she experiences the same pain points that others in her situation seem to feel:
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What to do?
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How much money would it be?
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How to schedule with the group?
She wants to be able to coordinate with varying schedules/budgets in a diplomatic and accommodating way.
Looking at the data I was able to find common ground and expose pain points like how much money is spent, difficulty in scheduling, and getting a solid commitment on plans.
I utilization of the "I like, I wish, and what if" method. I was able to use this to brainstorm possible features.
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Likes: Something to aid in social experience.
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Wants: An easy way to coordinate/budget.
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What if's: It could learn our preferences to possibly gain potential rewards.
This gave great insight into what was 'high value' and would be some quick and easy wins vs what was 'high effort' and 'low value'. Showing me what might be possible for future iterations when more time and resources would be available.
Created an Intuitive Interface User flows to help create an intuitive interface for users and to map out from A to Z how they may navigate through the app. Doing this early at a basic level knowing that it will change and branch out in new directions as the app takes shape and grows.
Mood Board
During ideation creating a mood board is a favorite part of mine. I worked hard to piece together a collage of images, fonts, interactions, features, icons, and UI elements to communicate the artistic direction of the project.
For 'Mosh' I wanted to portray coming together highlighting the social fun night life in the tone and aesthetic.
The storyboard illustrates our user 'Sarah' and her frustrations wanting to participate socially, to find the right event, scheduling and budgeting the activity in a diplomatic and accommodating way.
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The weekend is coming and Sarah wants to go out with her friends.
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Her group text chain quickly descends into madness and indecision and no solid plans get made.
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Sarah gets frustrated and decides to google what is going on in the city. Here she comes across our app.
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All of her friends get a ping simultaneously, what could this be?
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Sarah joined our app and is inviting them to join as well. It promises to remove some of the hassle of planning with a whole group.
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After interests and budgets are entered, a list of possible nights out is generated. They then all vote on which one they’d like to do.
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Indecisiveness removed, the gang finds a new spot in their price range. They go out and have a wonderful time connecting with each other stress-free.
Our sketched wireframes were drafted as a team to ensure continuity in our design concepts. This was also a fun way to also do some brainstorming, with everyone on my team showing what they think the app could look like. From there we were able to get a better idea of the interactions and the layout of each of the frames as the idea's rose to the top.
We began to flesh out our Digital Wireframes for testing purposes. This is an example of the 'Events details' screen going through each iteration.
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Low fidelity wireframe
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Mid fidelity wireframe
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High fidelity wireframe
With the basic low fidelity digital wireframe some of the initial testing was to check the basic interactions and the layout to see early on what changes and improvements could be made. After conducting user tests to determine functionality, design, and usability of our app. We then took the feedback of our users to create our final iteration.
Some of the highlighted feedback we received on the navigation bar. Was that the icons were too big and not intuitive enough. We made them less cartoonishly large and also added labels. Aswell as removing the 'New mosh' button that seemed to be in the way and distracting for testers as they were simulating creating an activity.
On the itinerary/calendar frame the feedback given was that we needed a more flushed out and clear results after a group had voted on which activity to select and an option to add it to your current calendar easily.
Upcoming Events scroll feedback. Cards were made smaller not to take up more space than necessary, icons replaced with group image to better illustrate what group the plans are with and be more visually pleasing.
I think perhaps the best feedback given during user testing was that a accounts page was needed. The app was still in prototyping but the attention to detail was growing and the absence of an actual account page had become a noticeable gap.
The 'Mood board' graduated into a style guide helped our team communicate and collaborate better. We were able to create consistent UI and UX throughout the prototype and create a index as a resource while building and flushing out new frames that were not at first anticipated in the original 'user flow' like the previous mentioned 'account' page that was easily created as a after thought through the use of the style guide.
Thanks to the feedback from our testers, mosh was brought to life in our Final Prototype. We implemented color, photos, content and a logo to add depth and aesthetic to the app. The end product moved beyond a high-fidelity mockup and became a prototype in the final phase ready to go into development.
The questions posed in the problem statement "How might we design an app capable of generating specific, customized activities in a democratic way?" have been addressed and answered in the 'Mosh' app by providing a way to find and pose different upcoming events and activities by providing details, polling, and voting in a fun and easy way through inviting friends that both have the app and enjoy it, but also by inviting and allowing guests to utilize the app as well.
Mosh was an extremely rewarding and fun experience. Collaborating with my teammates we found it hard to shut down innovation and desire to perfect the project. Going forward where the app would naturally progress:
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It would have a Premium feature which would be the key monetarily for the success of the app.
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Building out a chat feature, this is something that I really liked when doing a comparative analysis with some of the competitors in action today.
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Extended quiz questions that would be natural with the ever expanding and diverse activities and events that could be voted on and selected.
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User discounts and loyalty rewards offered which could be another source of revenue from locations and activities looking to gain patrons.
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Last but not least to see 'Mosh' integrated with other apps such as Google calendar, Venmo, PayPal etc.
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