Invenio
Your Personalized Activity Suggester
OVERVIEW
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About the project
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In this project, we present "Invenio" a smartphone application that helps people in finding free time activities in a completely new and interesting way. It allows selecting activities from various options in very less time. ​
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Problem: Whenever people get free time, they try to find activities that suit their interests. The various challenges here which we all might have experienced are-
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Getting search results of places/activities which are of no interest to you
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Even If someone finds activity/ place they are interested in,
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It's hard to find people who are free at the same time and interested in accompanying you.
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It's hard to get detailed information or reviews about the place/ activity you have chosen.
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Solution: The solution proposed is a mobile application which serves as a personalized activity suggester. Our goals are to inform people of activities that they would enjoy, make it easy to find new activities with detailed information, get people involved in social aspects by helping them meet others that share their interests.
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My Role: I was part of a small cross-functional team where I conducted research in the form of domain research and user interviews. After we defined our main features, I created user flows, wire-frames and high fidelity interactive prototype for usability testing.
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Design Process
RESEARCH
Identifying the user needs
As part of the research, we interviewed several young adults. Also, I did domain research to examine the current situation with the identified problem space and identifying the needs of people. We wanted answers to questions such as,
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How do people look for activities/events?
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Do they get results of their interests?
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What do they do to get the detailed information beforehand?
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Are they able to ask friends or able to find other people to accompany them in the activity/event?
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User Interviews
We interviewed 10 young adults (students) at Indiana University. Most of the students said that-
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It takes a long time for them to search and decide on the activity​​
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Even when they finalize some activity, they worry about whether they will have fun.
Domain Research
I did a quick analysis of tools that people currently use to find activities or events. Some of the high-level takeaways-
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Facebook: The events don’t always have more details or reviews.
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Yelp: The community ratings rank the listings by overall popularity, not being flexible for individual user's tastes
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Eventbrite: There is more description of events and organizers, but one cannot know who is going to the event.
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DESIGN QUESTION
How might we improve activity search experiences with making people comfortable with new unexplored activities and allowing them to engage socially?
Data Analysis
To get insights from our qualitative research data, we used affinity diagramming technique. This session helped us to categorize and prioritize the problems, challenges, and issues faced by young adults.
Research Insights
Based on the overall insights from our research, we created high-level themes into which the major challenges or needs fell under. The major themes were:
VARIETY SUGGESTIONS
PERSONALIZATION
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Popularity ranking method doesn't care about user's personal choice
SOCIAL MEDIA ASPECT
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Knowing activities performed by their friends/family
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Getting recommendations from them
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Connect with new people
VARIETY SUGGESTIONS
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Many activities to choose from
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Try new activities
EASY TO UNDERSTAND
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Easy to understand, uncluttered interface
TARGET USER
JOURNEY MAP
Considering the existing process of searching for an activity, I mapped the journey of a user with an intent to register for an activity/event. I identified pain points where there could be an opportunity to improve the system and provide quick results.
BRAINSTORMING
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Exploring Ideas & Opportunities
While brainstorming about potential ideas, we finalized our interface platform to be mobile application due to its versatility and convenience. Further exploration included several ideas like AR app, Family-based suggester app, Exploration through playing games, Personalized activity app, etc.
DESIGN DECISIONS
Rationale behind the solution
After data analysis and brainstorming sessions, we finally chose a suitable solution and its features to address our problem space.
Considerations
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Should be easy to access and portable
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Different users have different interests
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User needs friends/family to accompany them
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Many event-related apps are already in the market
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Users need trustworthy and correct information
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Convenience of booking/registering for an event
Requirements
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Mobile app for ios & android
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Use the concept of artificial intelligence for personalized suggestions
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Include social feature
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Combine correct precise information and personalized aspect
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Include event/activity establishment’s website address
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Use tinder-like interface for activity cards
Features
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Suggest activities/events according to user’s interest (Interest categories and refining solution)
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GPS utilization for relevant and accurate suggestions
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Save recommendations
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Detailed activity information
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with photos and videos
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Establishment’s website address, location, and contact
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User rating and reviews
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Social aspect features
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Contact other users
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Share events with friends
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FLOW DIAGRAM
Mapping & organizing information
Designing for the user experience started from sketching out a typical user journey based on the accomplishments of major tasks within the app. Once the user journey has been identified, the team began exploring design flows for general and specific use cases.
WIREFRAMING
Low Fidelity Prototyping
Based on the main features and task flows of our application, we created wireframes.
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Considered user flows:
Signing up, choosing and registering for an activity and miscellaneous screens like Check attendees, Likes-Bookmarks screen
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Know attendees
Read user reviews
User can see available
discounts/deals
Login Screen
Select Interests Screen
Refine Interests Screen
Home Screen
Registration Screen 1
Registration Screen 2
Activity Detail Screen
Activity Card
Activity/event price
Registration Success Screen
Activity Detail Screen
VISUAL DESIGN
High Fidelity Prototype
Based on the feedback from cognitive walkthrough evaluation, we implemented a few changes in high-fidelity prototype and finally divided our screens into three sections- personalization, activity information, and user profile.
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User flows were finalized for each section making sure that the sequence of each screen had proper interaction.
Sign Up Flow
Users can sign up with Facebook or email. Facebook is more obvious so that users can take advantage of the social features of the application. If they do not have Facebook account, they can create Invenio account with their email id. After selecting to sign up, the user will select their interests from a list of broad categories, then refine interests by choosing specifics for previously selected categories. These selections are necessary to give the app a head start in understanding the tastes of the user.
Choosing for an activity
On the home screen, users can choose ‘View-All’ thumbnail to view all the activities according to the interests selected during the sign up process or can choose specific thumbnails too, for example- food & drink, outdoor, trending, etc. To create a more personalized experience, custom category feature (for example- ‘My Stuff’ thumbnail) has also been added on the home screen which will let the user pick and filter any combination of categories to be applied.
Activity cards provide recommendations. Swiping left will dislike the activity and next activity will be displayed and swiping right will save the activity to “Likes.” The app will update its recommendation algorithm based on user liking that activity.
Details button on activity card will show the activity details. On the details page, there are pictures and/or a short video that describes the activity, name, contact information, exact time and location, description, and coupons (if available).
See the people who are going to attend this activity and some other related activities. There is also a way to contact these attendees by viewing their profile, talking to them through Facebook messenger or requesting to email them.
Registering for an activity
User can register for the activity by clicking register button on activity details screen. In-app web browser register feature has been provided as every different activity/event establisher might need different details from user.
Likes & Profile
Likes and Profile screen is accessible to user from bottom navigation bar. On “Likes,” users can see all the activities that they have swiped right on.
Profile screen displays various account options, as well as letting users navigate to their past activities. From that list they would be able to bookmark the ones they enjoyed and would like to attend again, adding them to the bookmarks menu.
Invenio Demo
CONCLUSION
Reflection
We conducted cognitive walkthroughs and user testing to find out usability issues. Most of the users found the application user-friendly and could easily navigate between the screens. Some users found sign up flow quite new which they didn’t explore till now. We thought that we can improve this experience by presenting tutorial for first-time users, this will help the user know the whole concept of our app and its functions.
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Due to time constraints, we were only able to concentrate on primary flow from user perspective. With more time, these are some features that we would like to add-
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User flow for event organizer
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Detailed screens for ‘add review’ task
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Conduct more user evaluations with participants of different age group
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