MyPlace

MyPlace enables users to share their homes with direct and mutual friends (think colleage alumni, sports communities etc). During this project I designed a user flow for creating new groups and invite friends to the newly formed group. The business strategy leans heavily on invites as a growth strategy so the process should be frictionless and intuative.

2022

User Research

Prototyping

MyPlace

2022

User Research

Prototyping

MyPlace

2022

User Research

Prototyping

High Fidelity Prototype

Watch the video below for a walkthrough of the final prototype 🎉

High Fidelity Prototype

Watch the video below for a walkthrough of the final prototype 🎉

High Fidelity Prototype

Watch the video below for a walkthrough of the final prototype 🎉

The Problem

Business

MyPlace currently manually creates groups on users behalf. As the company is in Beta, this offers control over the process to prevent any bad actors. However, in order to scale an effective user-driven invite strategy is required.

User

Users would like to invite trusted connections to MyPlace in order to share their homes.

The Solution

Group invites is a new feature and thus we leaned heavily on user interview to set the initial parameters of the experience.

1. Giving users flexibility over their invite method

2. Giving users control over privacy settings

3. Building a message customisation feature for users to dictate the tone of their welcome message to the invitee

Usability Review

We took stock of the current product experience with a usability review. Red stickies represent pain points and green represent 'wow' moments.

Frustrations

User Frustration

New users to MyPlace need to be able to invite their existing communities easily to the product in order to share their homes.

Business Frustration

We hypothesize that enabling users to create communities and invite friends to join them will be the primary growth channel for the product.

User Interviews

In order to understand the motivations and concerns users might have when sharing their spaces we conducted user interviews. Here are a few key questions we asked.

1. Walk me through the last time you shared your home with your networks?

2. Tell me about how often you shared your home with networks?

3. Tell me what your conerns were while sharing your home with networks.

4. Walk me through how you went about finding if you have any networrk in a city you are visiting

5. Tell me any website or app you have used to help you find people in your network.

In order to understand the motivations and concerns users might have when sharing their spaces we conducted user interviews. Here are a few key questions we asked.

1. Walk me through the last time you shared your home with your networks?

2. Tell me about how often you shared your home with networks?

3. Tell me what your conerns were while sharing your home with networks.

4. Walk me through how you went about finding if you have any networrk in a city you are visiting

5. Tell me any website or app you have used to help you find people in your network.

Interview Screenshots

Affinity Mapping

We synthesised the insights from user interviews into themes in order to form our primary and secondary insights.

Information Architecture

The current experience is rudimentary, however, mapping the IA at a page, section, and component level helped to breakdown each element being utilised.

Ideation

The fun part. We ideated around the problem statements using brain mapping (improve & add) alongside crazy 8's.

What can we add

Flexibility over invite methods (social channels & share via link)

What can we improve

Clear user guidance during the group creation process.

Usability Testing

I ran two moderated usability tests with a figma prototype.

I created six tasks for the user to complete and asked them to run me through their thought process whilst performing each action.

The tests highlighted a number of improvements to reduce friction further by restructuring the onboarding hierarchy.

Moderated usability testing

Test outcomes

Having tested the prototype, we learned which steps were causing users issues, and which flows had a sufficient task success rate.

Prioritising tasks

1. Restructuring the invite method formats. Give users the highest level of flexibility by default.

2. Clarifying the 'email completed' state to give users feedback that their entry has been accepted.

3. Renaming 'Statistics' to 'Health Metrics' navigation to improve clarity

Replacing email with invite by link

Updated UI when an email is completed

Giving users more appropriate social sharing options (plus familiar iconography)

Next Steps

Accessibility considerations

MyPlace should reconsider the usage of their primary colour, it currently does not pass contrast checks. For our design with created a darker shade of the same hue #D6692A

Places filtering mechanism

Despite the platform being ‘sharing’ focused, there is still a monetary exchange in most cases. Therefore, exploring a filter mechanism based on price should be tested.

User growth

The way people search for their connections locations does not match the method they would invite users (focus on user flexibility first).

Key Lessons Learned

Always test

During user interviews I uncovered how people search for the location of their friends (Facebook, IG, and LinkedIn). I then assumed these channels would be how users would share a product that helped them solve this problem. However, this was incorrect.

Offer user feedback whenever possible

Designing feedback, even through micro interactions leads to a smooth user experience. Whenever possible, give the user this information in order for them to progress efficiently.

Key Lessons Learned

Always test

Offer user feedback whenever possible

Designing feedback, even through micro interactions leads to a smooth user experience. Whenever possible, give the user this information in order for them to progress efficiently.