CASE STUDY

An interactive scheduling app for Discord users

Aimset Season 3 Team
Felisha Alexander (UX Designer| Researcher| Team Lead)

April 29, 2024

Meetify hero image on homepage

How it all started

I applied to be a part of a hackathon from a design community called Aimset. The founder put together our two teams with our given projects. The original name of Meetify was Whencanwemeet. After much ideation, surveys, and team collaboration we decided on a more modern and simpler name. I'll show the process below.

First steps: Defining the problem

"Discord users lack the experience to create and vote on meetings. As a result, users miss out on the opportunity to initiate online meetings within the community."

Before our first meeting, we established for the UX designers to out and conduct research with competitors.

What makes them stand out?
What are their key features?
Are they accessible for all users?
What integrations do they have?
What can we do better?
What consistent design choices are scheduling apps making?

Competitive Analysis conducted by the Aimset team table created by Felisha Alexander

Research Insights: Key Findings

After thorough research conducted among the UX designers, we had a better understanding of users' needs while using scheduling apps.

Personalization with creating meetings (Layout preferences, Availability, Reoccurring/One-time meetings)
Keeping ads to zero or absolute minimum
Have the menu to the side for users to access everything easily

Information Architecture: Where does everything go?

Myself and another designer got together and started ideating how we wanted to structure our information on our web app. In the Figjam I created we went to work.

We created started on the landing page, what users would see when they searched Meetify. Then the app itself, we discussed how we wanted to organize the dashboard, what would be considered profile settings, and what features we wanted to incorporate.

Designing the Information Architecture of Meetify

Drafting the lo-fi wireframes

We split the wireframes between the designers by time and experience. Since we have school, work, and families we had to make sure we didn't have too much work on our hands. I took on the majority of them and created a lo-fi prototype for users to test what we've created so far.

Lo-Fi Figma Prototype

Lo-fi wireframes for Meetify

Whencanwemeet to Meetify: How we ideated the logo

We all agreed, the name was pretty long, and didn't have a catchy modern feel to it. First I asked everyone who would want to input their opinion on what the name should be changed to. I had a few people give me their ideas and my own and created a survey on SurveyMonkey. I sent it to the team and the results were that 74% wanted the name Meetify.

Results from the Meetify name decision

I then asked the team who would want to volunteer to create the logo for Meetify. I had a few volunteers and gave everyone a week and for them to send their ideas to the Figjam for the next meeting to discuss and decide.
Unfortunately with our huge time difference with some of the team (11 hours), it was hard to schedule meetings. So I made another survey with Google Forms with the logo ideas and had everyone make their decisions on their own time.

Logo choices we created

The official Meetify logo

Style Guide ideation

The team now needed to get to work with the style guide. Haley (UX/UI Designer) volunteered to take on the task. One thing we all agreed on was we wanted to give the app a Discord-like feel to it. With Haley's extensive knowledge of color theory and typography, she knew just what to do.

The style guide Haley Smith put together for Meetify

Features: What makes Meetify unique

We all agreed, that we wanted the app to allow users to create meetings and polls and to send a link. That allows the receiver to see the invite whether they have the Meetify app or not.

But we wanted to also add something else. Interactive Pixel Pets. We searched other apps that have pets and how they incorporated them into the app. So we did just that, we talked to our developers and they agreed it'd be a fun addition to the app and shouldn't be complicated to add.

Example of pets Felisha Alexander created

Revising wireframing into mockups

Transforming the low fidelity wireframes into mockups to bring our vison of Meetify into a reality. We implemented the style guide Haley created, and keeping space guidelines in mind.

Finalized homepage and product page for Meetify designed by Haley Smith

Onboarding page designed by Felisha Alexander

Dashboard, events, meeting creation, friends list, and public page created by Felisha Alexander and Haley Smith

Tool Stack

Figjam (Project Kick off)
Figma (Wireframing & Prototyping)
Google Docs (Research Questions)
Google Sheets (Competitive Analysis)
Discord (Meetings)
Google Forms (Surveys)
SurveyMonkey (Surveys)

What I've learned along the way

While Meetiy was an absolute blast to create, there's always something to learn. With this, I learned:

Juggling time zones can be a major challenge. We had half our team on the other side of the world. Scheduling a consistent time for meetings wasn't possible.
Keeping communication open between everyone wasn't always easy. Most of the team wasn't sure what our next steps were, or weren't comfortable giving feedback on designs.
In the beginning we had a great start, but team collaboration started to drop. The team didn't feel motivated to complete the project anymore.

What I did to solve the problems within the team:

I decided to make most of our communication offline. I sent a bi-weekly message with progress, and what our next steps are going to be.
I made a section for the team to give feedback in that section anonymously so nobody feels pressured. Or they can message me directly if comfortable.
I created a team survey to see why they're losing the motivation to complete the project. My analysis was the lack of meetings caused a drop in production.

What I'd do differently

The next time I manage a project, I was to implement a more structured plan like Agile. I wasn't assigned the Lead manager for this project. I stepped up and listened to the team.