Thank you for being here with me today
Let's hold space together
Thinking of you
I am enough
Building resiliency through community
One day at a time
Thank you for being here with me today Let's hold space together Thinking of you I am enough Building resiliency through community One day at a time
humNET
Social experiential mobile app
Sharing space virtually
humNET is a social experiential mobile app which helps people feel connected and share space for everything from grief to gratitude.
Early stage startup with a novel concept
The goal is to help tackle social isolation and loneliness, but the current MVP app is barely functioning and not doing justice to the concept.
MY ROLE
UX Design, UX Strategy, UX Writing, UI Design, User Research
TOOLS
Figma
TEAM
Darren Mark - Founder
Alice E - UX/UI Designer
Zach Schenkler - Product Manager
Ajay Katrodiya - Development Team Lead
CONTEXT
MVP mobile app developed in Flutter
How might we help people hold space together virtually and feel connected for everything from grief to gratitude?
What is a humn?
Humns are short, experiential events
1-10 minutes long
Participants share a virtual space with no chat, video, or audio
Focus on a phrase with shared intention together
Starting the project
We needed to identify what was working and what needed to be redesigned, prioritizing the most impactful updates to make before pilot testing and pitching to investors.
Evaluating the existing app
I documented the app and evaluated it against usability heuristics, making note of various types of issues such as flow, UI, and functionality.
What we learned
It’s too difficult to join a humn
The app forced all users into a lengthy login process to join a humn - even more confusing was a Guest option that didn’t work.
Humn experience is lacking
Rather than feeling immersed and connected, the humn experience felt confusing and sometimes overwhelming with vibration and sound that couldn’t be adjusted.
Some things don’t work
There were a number of elements that didn’t function consistently or correctly, which can easily lead people to abandon the app altogether.
What else is similar?
Since humns are a unique concept, we examined apps with similar functions and identified what worked well.
Find apps similar enough
In seeing how apps handle similar functions, we began to identify what worked well elsewhere that would make humNET feel familiar and easy to use.
What we focused on
Creating short events
Humns are unique short events 1-10 mins long. We found it valuable to look at the design of event related platforms like Meetup and Zoom.
Immersive experience
We examined other meaningful group virtual experiences and found a good comparison with meditation apps like Headspace and Insight Timer.
Planning for the future
Being an early stage startup, we prioritized certain items for now while making note of how things could be expanded in the future, especially for monetization.
Who would use this?
With a limited timeline and scope, I came onto the project and oriented myself with existing research.
Learning who would use this
There was existing feedback from the founder’s discovery interviews learning more about the people who would use this and their wants, needs, and expectations.
What we learned about the users
Dealing with heavy topics
Two key groups that came forward for pilot testing were people in substance recovery and professionals processing grief related to their work.
Need for a trauma-informed approach
Knowing that users could be dealing with heavy topics or emotions, we wanted to adopt a trauma-informed approach to design and research.
Desire for adaptability
Humns can be about lighter topics too, such as celebrations and gratitude, and we wanted to ensure the app is adaptable to accommodate a range of emotion.
Prioritizing for impact
I defined which changes to include in the redesign while managing stakeholder input and scope creep. The team onboarded a second designer partway through the project and I took on a lead designer role.
Assets included a robust Airtable, PowerPoints, Trello, Slack, docs, and spreadsheets.
Assessing the requirements to scope the project was a big challenge, as the stakeholder had a large backlog of ideas and notes spread between various tools.
Our approach
As a team, we worked together to compile items from the founder’s notes, clarifying what to include now and what to put in a backlog.
I led a group call where we ranked ideas to determine the scope and specifics using a prioritization matrix.
I researched additional tools to put into use, such as a RACI chart to define roles and responsibilities. This became a key asset as the project gained further complexity.
Unique assets
While redesigning the most complex feature, the humn experience itself, it became clear we needed a timeline reference to ensure clarity and understanding.
Humn Timeline
I created this visual guide to help us better communicate our understanding of the timing of different phases of the humn experience.
The term “Time Til Humn" (TTH) became very useful as we got into the detailed UI flows and logic.
After multiple team conversations about copy, dialog text, verbiage, and placeholder content, it became clear we needed brand voice documentation.
Defining Brand Voice & Tone
Inspired by this article, I defined voice principles, usage notes, and a trait scale to better define consistent use of language. I based this on meeting notes from prior conversations around verbiage so we all had a single source of truth.
More to come
This is an ongoing project
Check back soon for further updates!