The Flock App
Designed with the users’ busy schedule and safety in mind, the Flock app is intended to help connect like-minded individuals for their next adventure.
Two years after living through Covid-19, the idea to create Flock was born after considering how the pandemic has tightened one’s circle of friends, weeding out the perhaps previously unknown drifting relationships. A conversation with a peer revealed that he was not particularly upset about this, but it did make it more difficult to plan trips with a smaller pool of companions with all different schedules. As a result, this idea to blend together the premise of dating apps with the chance to meet new folks to potentially travel with.
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
This project was developed with a four-person team: Ashley Bollman, Ryan Dill, Chris Hernandez, and myself.
As project manager, I guided team progress and and contributed research through user interviews and prototype testing.
TOOLS AND METHODS
We started by brainstorming the best ways to transform the social aspect of dating apps into a safe avenue to meet new travel buddies.
Our team decided to focus on the wicked problem of the vulnerabilities of traveling alone. To remedy this, we created an idea for an app that combines the matching aspect of dating apps with the streamlined planning and discount options of travel websites. Our research aimed to find how users incorporate technology into their lives, safety practices while traveling, experience with dating apps, and what characteristics were sought out in an ideal travel partner.
Our hope is is to connect like-minded individuals together for traveling purposes and create lasting friendships.
In order to keep our team organized, we used Figma as the hub for our apps’ ideas and progress. Outside of Figma, we used behavioral archetypes, user interviews, a competitive analysis, card sorting, and prioritization matrix to further develop our app.
DELIVERABLES
EMPATHY AND USER RESEARCH
We created two behavioral archetypes to flesh out our potential targeted demographic. The hypothetical scenarios centered around young women traveling alone, hoping to meet others to find strength in numbers. After fleshing out this general demographic, we brainstormed research questions to get real data on how young folks feel about travel, meeting people through apps, and what they look for in companions.
Our questions were then distilled into a user survey, disseminated through text and email to friends and acquaintances who fit the intended demographic. The users who responded indeed were part of the target audience, being young, single people living in America with the desire to travel.
We also created a competitive analysis in order go gauge which features worked best in products that currently exist so that we may hone in on how we can expand our scope to address need.
DEFINITION AND SYNTHESIS
Based on our survey results, it seemed that people are cautiously hopeful when it comes to finding travel companions online. When asked how far people would be will to travel with a stranger, 50% of participants said they were willing to travel with a user they met on the app beyond state lines. We also found that our users value location and affordability the most, at 50% and 42.9%, respectively, of users responding positively. We decided that good deals in prime locations should be prioritized.
We created an idea map of the relevant feedback to create a visualization of where we should direct our focus. After creating the map with all the input, our team went through and chose what we determined to be the best things to implement into our final product.
IDEATION
Based on the results of our user interviews and survey, we synthesized a few user insights:
Users are generally skeptical of meeting people online, but would be open to it if there was safety net in place, such as mutual friends or background checks.
Users are willing to travel with a companion and adjust the dates of their trips in order to get the best deals on flights and accommodations.
Users are willing to share their own interests in order to gauge compatibility with other users for potential matches.
POV statement: A reluctantly individual traveler needs to connect with trustworthy, like-minded people in order to reap the benefits of traveling as a group
HMW statement: How might we create a way to safely connect individual travelers to one another in order to travel together?
After analyzing the data gathered from conducting potential user interviews, we found it difficult to think of enough options to offer regarding affordability. We also realized that we did not give as much forethought to accessibility options.
While prioritizing our insights, we reorganized our brainstorm ideas and realized that we were perhaps too ambitious with the scope of our initial services. As a result, we decided to narrow down the focus of our app from connecting travelers and trip planning, to only connecting users safely.
PROTOTYPING
After gathering data and refining our app’s purpose, we started on creating wireframe mock-ups to get a feel of the apps’ usability
TESTING AND OUTCOMES
To test our lo-fi mockup’s usability, we conducted unmoderated remote testing via Zoom in order to watch which movements our testers did naturally.
Key learning from tests:
May need to adjust logo to avoid profane association and appeal to broader audience.
We can reduce confusion for users when testing by taking out industry-specific jargon (ie: hero space).
Clarify intentions of interactions (ie: CONNECT vs PEOPLE)
Icons not fully intuitive
Clarify consequences when connecting w/ other users.
We wanted our users to be able to:
Sign into the app.
Find a profile to check out.
Visit that profile.
Contact the person.
Find the settings page.
Navigate to emergency info.
Find your profile page.
Navigate to review page.
Next steps:
Provide more barriers between users, such as only allowing messages between mutual connections.
Make entire profile link clickable versus just the photo
Update icons to make more intuitive to users
Differentiate between initiating connection with other users and accessing profiles already liked.
Taking all our learnings into account, we were able to create updated iterated prototypes:
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
If give the chance to expand our research project, we would also look to target young college students living away from their homes, hoping to entice their engagement for traveling during academic breaks. We would plan to use social media to spread the word about our app and canvass campuses to gather in-person results.
Going forward, we would recommend pursuing further interviews with questions directed at users’ preferences about meeting people online in order to gain clearer perspective on how best to connect them. It would be beneficial to do this before prototyping application wireframes in order to help us ideate a product that fully encompasses users’ needs. We also believe it would be wise to perform an additional competitive analysis to gain insight on what features work most effectively. Furthermore, through our previous round of surveys and interviews, we discovered that our users’ greatest concern is navigating/circumventing the inherent dangers that come with meeting strangers online. As a result, we would like to explore the option of incorporating extra layers of security, such as linking social media in order to potentially connect through mutual friends.