Redefining House Parties through a Social Networking Service
Service Design | Design Innovation Development | Design Strategy | UX Research
OVERVIEW
Vybe is a party planning app that provides an integrated event planning experience, allowing hosts to plan and attendees to seamlessly participate, ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion.
GOAL
To revolutionize house party planning and provide a holistic experience by empowering people to organize and attend house parties that embrace diversity and inclusivity through the power of shared experiences and celebrating various cultures.
CONSTRAINTS
A short timeline of only 10 weeks to create an innovative social network offer that is feasible, fills a unique user-stakeholder need, and addresses a market opportunity that so far remains unexplored/ unsaturated by real and potential competitors.
OUTCOME
Through our Vybe app, users interact by hosting or attending parties, receiving personalized recommendations, using Vybe’s collaborative party tools, and participating in community building features.
FINAL PITCH DECK
FINAL VISION VIDEO
ROLE
Service Designer and Researcher
TIMELINE
10 weeks | Sep 2023 - Nov 2023
TOOLS
Adobe Illustrator
Figma
Figjam
TEAM
Kunal Belamkar - Design manager
Muskan Gupta - Service designer
Reva Naik - Service & sustainability designer
John Storey - Professor
people between the ages of 18 to 45 say that a friend’s house is the top place to socialize and party.
Challenge
Despite the enjoyment people find in house parties, genuine connections are impacted by the inconvenience caused by unexpected guests and logistical nightmares associated with hosting them.
Introducing
What ?
Vybe is a party planning app that provides an integrated event planning experience, allowing hosts to plan and attendees to seamlessly participate, ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Why?
To empower people to organize and attend house parties that embrace diversity and inclusivity through the power of shared experiences and celebrating various cultures.
How?
Users interact by hosting or attending parties, receiving personalized recommendations, using Vybe’s collaborative party tools, and participating in community building features.
Conducting research and generating user insights.
Market Landscape and Competition
We researched the existing social networking services in the market, closer to our brand concept of “house parties” in the context of direct vs indirect competitors, brands that offered customization and digital collaborative planning.
We then did a competitive study with the help of a segment matrix & blue ocean strategy to analyze in depth their objective, customer segment, product offerings.
2x2 Matrix
Blue Ocean Strategy
What People Had to Say
We conducted interviews with 14 participants and received 109 survey responses and these were some of the significant findings we derived from the research.
House party type preference
Important factors will attending house parties
Feels effortless
“The best part about attending house parties is that I don't have to mentally prepare myself since I’m there to catch up and hang out with my friends that I’ve known a long time.”
Cultural exposure
“As a host, a get-together like friends-giving to have a cultural exchange is a dream.”
Don’t like the mess
"Cleaning up after a party is a deterrent to host.”
Wholesome experience
“As hosts, I would like to enhance the guests’ experience by paying attention to details like the guest list, theme, food and drink preference, music, invitations, budget and theme.”
User Segments
We derived 2 user segments from all the data we collected from our interviews and surveys.
University students
Age: 18 to 28 years
Early career professionals
Age: 22 to 35 years
Archetypes
We created 5 archetypes based on our user segments. We used the 2x2 segmentation matrix to prioritize two final archetypes.
Our archetypes depict key characteristics, behaviors, and needs of our user segments.
-
Has to know the host.
Wants to catch up with friends they haven’t met in a while.
Commute has to be convenient.
Well hosted party with good music and food fostering conversation.
Wants it to feel like a casual get-together.
-
Wants to celebrate their space through cultural exchange.
Prefers hosting tighter groups of 10 to 20 attendees.
Cater to a diverse set of people to make everyone feel included.
Guests matter more than the budget.
Synthesis
Once we had a clear understanding of our target users and their needs, wants, pains and gains, through the interviews and surveys that we conducted, we created empathy maps, customer profiles and user scenarios for both our archetypes.
We used these tools and methods to articulate the data to synthesize and generate user insights.
Party attendees
User scenario
Empathy map
Customer profile
Party hosts
User scenario
Empathy map
Customer profile
User Insights
After synthesizing our data points, we had four user insights that were crucial for the further design process.
Introverts feel overwhelmed by unexpected guests, leading to anxiety which they manage by drinking.
At house parties, there's a desire for genuine connections, but a fear of inauthentic networking exists.
A vision for gatherings that celebrate cultural exchange in a visually appealing setting.
The logistical challenges and aftermath of hosting deter people from organizing gatherings.
North Stars
The North Stars method was developed by Gabriella Lanning along with her colleague at Google. It aims to bring design into the early stages of strategic planning.
North Stars provide value to both users and the business. It is clear, addresses user pain points, is compelling, measurable, achievable, and does not prescribe solutions.
We used our user insights to generate our North Stars which subsequently guided the ideation and development work.
How to build a North Star
North Star 1
Hosts can seamlessly plan a party by finding everything within our app, to increase our revenue by xx%.
North Star 2
Our attendees can have their needs accommodated conveniently and effectively through our app's party collaboration tools, to increase our customer base and engagement by XX%.
North Star 3
Attendees and hosts can access and upload post party memories by creating an inclusive community, to increase our active users by xx%.
Developing design criteria from insights.
Core Drivers and Enablers
Our value pillars Personalization, Community and Diversity formed the foundation of the SNS concept. These value pillars collectively shaped the commitment to crafting impactful and user-centric experiences through our app, Vybe.
Value Pillars
Insights to ideation.
Value Proposition Canvas
Value proposition canvas = Value map + Customer profile
On the left side is the value map which has all the ideation done based on the value pillars. We segregated them in three categories of gain creators, pain relievers and products and services.
On the right side, is the customer profile where we mapped all our insights & data points to understand the pains, gains, and customer jobs to be done.
We conducted a fit analysis of all the pains, gains, customer jobs that we were able to resolve.
Value map
Customer profile
User Flows
Testing and validating the design concept.
Goals, Methods, Feedback
We applied usability metrics to measure if our app could achieve the goals of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
We then documented the feedback we received based on our set goals.
Validate and prioritize the features and flows of the app.
Goals
User preference regarding our brand logo.
How much money are our users’ willing to spend.
Methods
1
Buy-a-feature game
Start, stop, continue
2
Dot voting
3
Subscription model
4
Refining design strategy and concept.
Final App Screens
Business Model Canvas
Milestones
Process and Methodology
Lessons Learned
Creative integration: We applied methods that can be reliably integrated into a business.
Transforming ideas: We utilized conceptual models to transform ideas into tangible prototypes.
Product strategy: We developed comprehensive product plans within business strategies, covering production, marketing, distribution, and intellectual property.
Financial forecasts: Created forecasts and documents for communicating concepts to investors.
Innovation Presentation: We learned how to showcase innovation's importance for successful organizations.