- Prototype link (Please submit a link to a playable prototype, not a link to your design file)
- Describe your project (max 150 words)
Our project aims to address three challenges experienced by college students: (1) coordinating casual social events with a large group of people, (2) the discomfort of bringing up personal budgets in social settings, and (3) the hurdles to discovering new places off-campus. Our app, Greenlight, gives college students the “green light” to take group social events “out of the group chat” and into reality by streamlining the wieldy process of event planning. Unlike other event-planning apps, Greenlight is designed to take into consideration the budget limitations, dietary restrictions, and activity preferences of users and their friends to suggest events that are both affordable and enjoyable for everyone. Greenlight also packages event invitations into AI-generated “cards” that are fully-customizable and can be digitally kept as a fun memento of outings. Being both creative and inclusive while planning events has never been made easier.
- Describe your research process and findings. If you conducted any surveys or interviews, please include the survey form and/or interview questions here. If you conducted secondary research by pulling from online sources, please include a link to your sources. (Max 500 words)
One of the experiences our team shared was the difficulty of organizing social events involving large groups of people—a situation many college students find themselves in. One particularly uncomfortable aspect of this is deciding an itinerary when individuals have different budgets or dietary preferences. We decided to conduct discovery interviews, distribute an online survey, and conduct research online to obtain more insights into this problem.
Discovery Interview Questions and Responses
From our in-person interviews, we found that our interviewees discovered new events through social media but also relied heavily on word-of-mouth. One interviewee expressed that the biggest limitation to planning events was finding a time that worked for all people, especially in large group settings. Both felt uncomfortable bringing up personal budgets in group settings.
From our 36 survey responses, we found that college students, on average, generally feel uncomfortable bringing up financial limitations, are worried about overspending when going out, and generally find it hard to find a time that works for all of their friends to spend time together. College students reported Instagram and word-of-mouth as the top two methods by which they discovered new places off-campus. Some challenges they brought up with regard to planning social outings included: coordinating with multiple people, staying within a preferred budget, figuring out transportation, and identifying an activity enjoyable for everyone. With regard to personal finances, they reported feeling hesitant going out multiple times a week, having fear of overspending due to “hidden costs” such as transportation, and saying no to social events due to money. Most people reported that planning normally fell on one or two people when going out in large groups.
We also decided to conduct online research to study precedents addressing this problem. We found several applications and websites (e.g. Eventbrite, Yelp, Facebook, Instagram, Meetup.com Doodle, Partiful, Gatherly); however, none of them resolved the key issues we wanted to address. For example, Eventbrite shows upcoming events in your area but does not have coordinating-ability and is not community-specific. Meetup.com is community-specific by organizing events by interest for strangers to attend; however, it does not allow users to coordinate events with specific individuals. Partiful was the closest thing we found to the kind of app we were looking for; however, we found that the burden of planning still fell on one person and that the app was more suitable for planning large parties rather than casual social events.
With this data, we decided that we wanted to create an app that alleviated: (1) the difficulty of coordinating multiple individuals’ availabilities, (2) the discomfort of bringing up finances, and (3) the challenge of discovering new places.
- Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions? (Max 500 words)
Our first major design decision was whether to design Greenlight into a mobile app or desktop website. We decided on a mobile app for 2 reasons: (1) from our survey findings, most college students reported discovering new events through social media applications like Instagram and Tiktok, which are more commonly used as mobile apps; and (2) we wanted a simple user interface with touchscreen-based actions, and easier capabilities to share features and messages with others.
Our next major design decision—and the one we are most proud of—was the “Plan an Event” feature of our app. This was informed by the survey finding of the difficulty of coordinating a date and time with a large group. As a result, students often resort to time-consuming ways to coordinate times, such as by comparing calendars or filling out forms like when2meet. We wanted to streamline this process by (1) including automatic Google/Apple Calendar integration with the sign-up process and (2) providing an easy visual representation of a group’s availability with a colorful calendar, where days that are highlighted in darker green indicate greater overlapping availability in the group. Selecting a date brings up a larger wheel, where overlapping availability can be seen in detail. This feature makes our app distinct from other scheduling apps, which often require users to manually input your availability and do not provide a visually clear way to identify the time that works best for a group of individuals. Moreover, this feature allows for users to specify monetary limits for events, which allows them to enjoy social outings in a financially-conscious way without bringing up the uncomfortable topic of money. This directly addresses the discomfort of discussing personal finances brought up in our survey findings.
Another major design feature was the “Events” section, which allows users to discover events that are happening locally. This section is unique from comparable event listings in apps such as Facebook by providing users with the option to filter events by estimated cost and the availability of specific friends. With this feature, we saw an opportunity to actively facilitate social connections while also highlighting small businesses. The “Dashboard” section added another social component to the app, where users can see what kinds of events their friends have recently attended.
Lastly, we decided to incorporate graphic design into our app by coming up with “cards” for events. “Cards” are fun and aesthetically-pleasing invitations generated by AI that contain information on the date, time, and location of events. They can be sent to friends through text, and are a visually-appealing way to engage users while still communicating important logistical information. We wanted to incorporate these “cards” to make event-planning more fun. The back of each card contains a QR code that can be scanned to invite a friend onto the app and accept an invite. Moreover, cards can be stored and “collected” after each event as mementos. We drew inspiration from the design of Spotify Wrapped stories for this distinct feature.
Built With
- figma
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