Eventwatch Android App
An app for club event and team project discovery in college campus.
Problem statement
There is no easy way for college students, especially those in their first and sophomore years to discover club events and team projects happening in campus. Current methods of discovery include posters, Facebook and word of mouth which have proved to be inefficient.
The team
The team includes myself as the product designer along with Debadatta and Aanchal as developers.
What's wrong with the current scenario?
I started the research by asking informally and observing students. Current methods of club event discovery include :
- Posters: Location dependant and tend to get torn.
- Facebook: Too many notifications making students turn a blind eye to events and sometimes they skip it in their newsfeed too.
- Word of Mouth: Limited reach.
Moreover, even though students know about an event, they tend to forget it.
The third and final year students are less affected by these problems since they are already part of 1-2 clubs and focus on those only. The problems are frequent with first and seconds years since they are new and want to explore all events.
Some students are not a part of any club but do personal projects for which they need team members in specific areas of expertise. Again, there is no easy way for them to approach others.
How might we make their experience better?
The core principles of the app include :
- Make event and project discovery easier in a scannable manner.
- Connect students with project team mates.
- Remind students before an event.
I started by drawing the user flow. Then, I began the layout design process by creating wireframes and writing down the pros and cons of each.
Clarifying doubts
At this point, we faced some doubts such as :
- How important is it for students to see number of people attending the event?
- Is an event share button on home screen necessary?
- What are people's perceptions towards a circular vs rectangular image as event pic on home screen?
In order to get the answers, I dived back into user survey and asked 8 students the following questions :
- Do you attend club events?
- Do you prefer going to club events which have more students attending?
- Do you attend these events alone or with friends?
- How do you communicate with friends regarding the events?
All of them communicated about the events using word-of-mouth or Whatsapp/Messenger. When asked about sharing events they discover on Facebook, they relied on messaging rather than using the "Share" button. They shared events of only those clubs which they were a part of.
For the circular vs rectangular image problem, we asked 8 students to draw a layout of an app showing 3 or 4 event names with images.
Only 2 students out of 8 drew circular images. Their reason: That's how images are presented in apps such as Whatsapp and Messenger.
We asked the other 6 students about their thoughts for drawing square/rectangular images instead of circular. Their reason: Circular images are for chat whereas the context here is an event poster.
High fidelity design
Current status
The app is currently in development and expected to be released soon.
Learning and Conclusion
This app is serving as a great exercise for both the developers and me. We are expecting to uncover more user problems and needs after the product launch. The current app design is suitable for small number of events since the target is college campus. If the app works in campus, we will be releasing it to public and are thinking of ways to refine our design. For example, adding filters to only show events according to a user's interests and his/her current location.
Fingers crossed :)