Mingle
Main Project in Mingle & Meet
A mobile app that connects travelers with similar interests, helps travelers to make friends when traveling alone and allows them to meet people from all over the world.
Meetup Exploration
V.0 Launch in July 2022
Explore nearby meetups and quickly view the detailed meetup recruiting information
Personalized Matching
V1.0 Launch in July 2022
Filter by time, distance, age, language, gender, interests
Easy Communication
V1.0 Launch in July 2022
Communicate with companions in-app, see if you are like-minded, decide meet up time and location
Easy Launching
V1.0 Launch in July 2022
Create a meetup step by step, tell others where you are going to, when you want to meet, who you prefer to travel with
Informative Profile
V1.0 Launch in July 2022
Check the credit of your potential companion, e.g. thumb up/down, character labels, comments, then make a decision whether he/she is trustworthy
Trip Management
V1.0 Launch in July 2022
View and manage all your trips, including meetups and tours, upcoming trips and past trips
Why are we doing this?
We believe traveling alone is a magical thing. Sometimes you will enjoy the feeling of loneliness and the real connection between yourself and the place of travel. But sometimes, you may just want to find someone to share the joy of the journey. Making friends when traveling alone allows you to meet people from all over the world. Different cultures, backgrounds, and experiences can occasionally make different sparks.
OVERVIEW
Every year, there are 57 million travelers in the United States looking for travel companions. Globally, this number turns to 1 billion. However, due to the pandemic in these two years, tourism has been hit hard and the constant fear of contagion has led to increasing the progressive closure of the person and reducing social relationships. We want to help! We want to do something to engage the social relationship of people, especially travelers!
Currently, the ways that people look for travel companions are different. From our research, 50% of travelers find travel companions on the road. The others choose to make it online, either through forums like Facebook Group and Reddit or by joining a local travel group through Meetup App. And there is no very mature app focusing on the social relationship of travelers especially on their way of the trip. So we think there may be a gap between user needs and the market.
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Check this video to get to know what we are going to make!
We have 3 designers on the team. Due to the Covid-19, we all work remotely. For the user research, we did all the user interviews virtually through Zoom online. And for the design work, we used Miro to do the ideation and Figma to prototype. In the very early stage, in order to keep us on the same page and get feedback immediately, we did the ideation and initial design work via Miro or Figma, at the same time with Zoom opening, just like we are in the same room. In this way, we can discuss very efficiently and keep at a fast pace to move on. As the UX design lead, I also take the responsibility to come out with the user stories, break down the design tasks into very small and achievable tasks in a short term, and assign them to each designer, as well as make design decisions.
​MY ROLE
UX Design Lead
UX Researcher
UR METHODS
User Interview & Survey
Persona
Information Architecture
User Story & User Flow
Prototyping & Wireframing
DURATION
More Than One Year
May 2020 - Present
This is a super big project from 0 to 1. We experienced a very long research stage and many rounds of iterative designs. I'll try to share it in a concise, complete, and focused way.
RESEARCH
Get to Know Travelers Who Want to Find Travel Companions
Our team was enrolled in a startup accelerator program. There are very experienced coaches helping us with customer discovery research. Actually, this very early stage customer discovery interview is a little different from what we do before. We should never mention or think about our solution. Just forget about our original intention. It is just a problem discovery but not a solution sensation because we need to validate what people actually want first.
We spent 3 months and conducted 2 rounds of interviews. The first round focused on validating the wants/needs of travelers. It was very open-ended without any leading questions. The second round targeted figuring out what pain points travelers have come across when looking for companions and how their experience with current platforms is.
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We have reached out to 108 participants and conducted 170 interviews. From the interviews, we know that travelers want companions because they like to meet new people and share joys with others, feel lonely when traveling alone, feel unsafe when going on an adventure trip, want to split the cost and save travel expenses. And here is what our target users say:
Sara Z.
Product Designer
I enjoy going to different places and meeting different people. If I am traveling alone, I may feel lonely because when I see something fun, there is nobody to share with.
Justin E.
College Student
I like going on adventure trips but sometimes I feel a little scared. For example, when hiking to the top of the mountain, I need pro hikers to encourage me and ensure my safety.
Dizard G.
Engineer
I‘d like to walk out of my comfort zone, to seek some new experiences with buddies on the road. It is very fun and sometimes it also helps to reduce the cost of my trip.
We also spent another two months conducting an online survey using Google Form, Survey Monkey, Facebook Group, and Reddit Communities of Travel. We collected 209 responses.
• Research Summary •
Finally, combining the interviews and survey results, we figured out travelers' wants and pain points of looking for travel companions.
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Travelers want companions for better travel experiences because they...
70%
like to meet new people and make friends
68%
like to share joys with others
48%
feel lonely when traveling alone
45%
feel unsafe when going on an adventure trip
43%
want to split the cost and save travel expenses
However, many travelers finally give up looking for companions because...
It takes too much effort to find and communicate with others through existing platforms
Compatibility is a big problem as people usually have different travel habits and interests
It is difficult to find a trustworthy stranger to travel with using existing online platforms
• Persona •
According to the data we collected from interviews and surveys, in order to outline our potential customers more vividly and clarify their characters, goals, frustrations, motivations, etc. we created 3 Personas as follows.
• Goals & Objectives •
To make our design thinking clearer and more targeted, we defined our final goal and objectives based on the three problems we summarized from the research. ​
ITERATIVE DESIGN
Iteration Is A Never-Ending Process
According to user feedback we collected, marketing strategy, and the change of business model, we experienced a cycle process of brainstorming, decision making, prototyping, and user testing.
• Mind Map •
After we clarified our goal and objectives, we brainstormed a lot of ideas and made a mind map as follows. It helped to map our thoughts and present them in a very structured way. It was also very helpful in exploring the relationships among ideas and features.
• Information Architecture •
According to the mind mapping above, we were able to decide on the information architecture very quickly.
• User Story & User Flow •
We created two main user stories, according to the two roles of using our app:
i. meetup explorer who is looking for meetups to join in
ii. meetup organizer who creates meetups and waits for travelers to join in
User Story I
As an international student who loves photography when traveling, I want to find travel buddies who are also aiming at taking photos so that we can share more commons and know more about local culture and life.
User Story II
As a traveler who likes going on adventure trips, I want to find travel buddies who would like to camp in Acadia National Park for 1-week long so that I don't feel lonely and unsafe.
• Prototyping •
Create a product from an idea to MVP, communication is the key to this project. We used a mix of paper sketch, lo-fi, mid-fi, hi-fi prototypes, visual designs to ensure design, engineering, and product are on the same page.
Paper Sketch
We have 3 designers, at the very early stage, we drafted some key screens and flows to discuss and come out with an ideal direction. It is a pretty fast way to get our ideas down to the paper and foster our further collaboration
Lo-Fi Prototype
It helps in communicating our design directions very effectively. We can quickly validate the key design flows. Also, it saves much time on topics like industry standards, color theme, typography, etc.
Mid-Fi Prototype
We included this process because we want to confirm our design is feasible. We don't want to go further and further on the wrong way. And mid-fi helps to communicate with our engineers in the early stage very well
Hi-Fi Prototype
At a later stage, we made hi-fi prototypes with most of the necessary design assets and components. It is highly functional and interactive. It helps to present our final design decisions to engineers.
Visual Design
At last, we focused on the aesthetics of our app, finalizing the color palette, images, illustrations, fonts, etc, and making changes to the assets, components, patterns in our design system. Then, magic!
• Solution •
This project is very big, even the MVP is very multi-functional. I'll dive into the solution to the key problems I mentioned in the research section. And I'll also show the designs of other necessary interfaces and details in the Design Gallery section. Now if needed, let's revisit the initial Goal and Objectives we set before I started presenting our solution.
There will list 10 cards in every card list section, as default. You can always click "More" or "See All" to check more.
Q1: How to find like-minded travel companions quickly?
1. You can quickly browse the meetup cards easily by swiping right or left. There lists what kind of travelers every meetup wants to look for, including trip focus, e.g. taking photos, food, nature, etc.
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2. There are vertical meetup categories down on the homepage. You can quickly go to the category that they are interested in, and go over the meetup cards.
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3. Since the cards listed on the homepage are limited. If you are not able to find a matched one, you can always open a meetup list and use the filter there.
Press the Filter Button and Interests tag, you will open a Filter Page. Just customize whom you are looking for, e.g. age, language, gender, interests.
These are the "Interests" labels here helping to quickly browse what every meetup focuses on.​
Are you wondering how these meetups with interests come out? Great question!
We allow every common traveler to create a meetup. It is free and almost non-effort. Just a few steps, then you will attract like-minded friends to travel with.
Q2: How to build connections and group up travelers?
Q3: How to create a meetup without too much effort?
P1: We group up travelers by Geo-Location. You can search for a detailed attraction or quickly choose an attraction pin on the map. Open this group of meetups, then you will find your perfect companions.
P2: In the future, we will introduce a membership strategy, allowing VIP members to group up directly with travelers by preference.
We break down the whole trip to several small spots. As the meetup organizer, you don't need to plan very well or calculate the budget. You just post your meetup and wait for others to join, then travel with them simply and equally.
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Currently, it includes 10 steps with 4 filled in as the default option. All steps are basic information of the meetup. It lasts around 20s to finish the process ideally.
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However, we need to test with real users and get more data to verify whether this process is too long.
This modal includes detailed place info and meetup horizontal cards, grouping up travelers of this attraction
Since traveling is a joyful and lighthearted thing, we don't want to make it too serious.
So, we overturn our previous design of rating with 5 stars. Instead, we use thumb ups and downs which are more common gestures in life
Q4: How to communicate with your travel companions effectively?
1. We build in-app instant messages. You can easily chat with your travel companions after you joined the meetup.
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2. You can also check the member list in the chatroom header. In order to know your companions ahead, you can go to their profile and see the Thumb Ups/Downs, where they visited, labels and reviews to get to know them in advance.
You are free to decide whether you want to leave the meetup. If you are the organizer, you will have to assign a new organizer for the meetup before you leave.
Check the thumb ups and downs here
Get a better understanding of what kind of traveler he/she is.
Q5: How to increase the level of trust in your travel companions?
1. We build a review system encouraging travelers to leave feedback for every meetup and every travel companion. In this way, you can go over the credit of your potential travel companion on his/her profile page, including thumb up/down, character label, and comment. Then, you can decide whether you are willing to travel with him/her. And because of the review system, we assumed travelers are more likely to try their best to be nice. And that is what we want to see in this travel social environment.
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2. Integrate the emergency call in-app. Currently, it includes calling 911 and emergency contact. In other future, we want to do "ask for help from the travelers around you" through the sound and live location of the app.
• Design Gallery •
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• Following Work •
Now the app is still in development. The MVP is planned to be ready at the end of March. Then we can go to beta test stage, on design-wise, we will focus on the following aspects:
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Whether the steps of creating a meetup is too many? - calculate the time of the process
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What percentage of users can successfully find travel companion(s) through our app? - count the completed meetups through the backstage of the TestFlight app
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What pain points do users have? - conduct follow-up interviews
​As you think, iteration!​
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REFLECTION
For me, this is not only a design project but also a big challenge!
In this project, I personally learned a lot. I experienced the product design process from 0 to 1. I felt encouraged when we collaborated on Figma being able to see each other's mouse working hard on the designs. I felt magical when we did the iterative designs with only changing the components in the design system. I felt proud when we came out with the solution finally with over 300 design frames. And of course, we have had conflicts or different opinions on designs. But we have resolved it and moved on. I think this is a wonderful opportunity for every one of the team to grow up.
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Also, as an industry project, there are many times that we have to come up with a trade-off design for the MVP version because we don't have so much experience in development or we don't have so much budget to use the development backend service. Therefore, our MVP may not be perfect in user experience. But we all believe that we will have the opportunity to improve our product step by step.
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Besides, taking the role of UX design lead is a big challenge for me. I got the opportunity to communicate with our engineers and our marketing consultant regularly. I am continuously learning how to manage a product, how to do the product-market fit, how to engage everyone to work on it, how to deal with conflicts, how to manage the press, how to persuade others to believe in you, your team, your product, and how to be a good leader.
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