Client
NearbyNext (Austin startup)
TOOL
Figma
Role
UX Designer
TIMELINE
3 months
An overview of NearbyNext
NearbyNext is an Austin-based startup that shows people local events in their area in an effort to foster community. My team and I connected with them to redesign their mobile app. We created a new design system and UI, optimized the existing features, and added new features to enhance the app.
My role and team
I worked on a UX design team of three people for this project. As a designer, I conducted market research, analyzed survey data, contributed to creating a new design system, conducted user testing, designed a new logo, and crafted detailed wireframes and prototypes.
We also collaborated with three team members in product roles and four team members in software engineering roles; all of whom were fellow students. Together, we comprised one of Convergent's Forge startup teams at UT Austin. We also worked alongside the startup's founder, who was not a student.
When my team connected with NearbyNext, the founder asked us to redesign their existing mobile app, which at the time had been launched in beta on the App Store for iOS.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
People seeking adventure and social connection need an efficient, unified platform to discover local events and facilitate meaningful community engagement.
Elevate the brand identity and user experience
Enhance the current branding and interface for a more cohesive and compelling user experience.
Optimize feature functionality through redesign
Revamp the existing features for improved functionality and seamless user interaction.
Create expanded features integrated with the design
Craft user-centric designs for additional features, and seamlessly integrate them to enhance product utility.
Starting this project, we received a large amount of survey data the company had collected from users about their lifestyles and the types of events they frequented. An initial problem we noticed with this was that most participants would quit part-way through the survey due to its length. To address this issue, we redesigned and shortened the survey, which significantly increased its completion rate.
Then, we analyzed the survey data and created a user-centered value map that highlighted user needs and pain points, giving us a better understanding of who we are designing for.
Website > App?
One concept we initially thought of was creating a website for the company's service, instead of an app, as we had seen a few of our competitors doing the same. However, we ultimately decided to create an app since our survey data suggested that our target users discover new events primarily on mobile apps such as Instagram, which allows them to be more easily sharable.
Social media platform
Because many of our respondents used Instagram or other platforms to find events, we considered adding a social media component to our app to engage users. But, while this may have been a good idea for the future, we decided not to implement this, as our user base at the time only consisted of about 150 users, and we thought the app should be more active before adding this element.
My team and I worked on Figjam to analyze the existing features of the app and figure out how to improve them.
Given these insights, we designed the first low-fidelity wireframes to solve problems from the existing features.
Use data to advocate for designs: Surveying users and presenting their preferences helped us convince the company to adopt our new logo, showing the power of data in decision-making.
Simplicity can be powerful: By removing unnecessary features and simplifying the UI, we created a more cohesive design that also sped up the app's backend, according to our developers.
Be clear and direct: Adding icons, colors, and labels can enhance the meaning of components and influence users' selections.
Adding “Sort by: Price” filter
Ability to purchase tickets within app
Users able to create and post their own events
Social media component (when user-base grows)
Adhere better to WCAG accessibility standards
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed learning about my design and thought process for NearbyNext. Check out some of my other projects below.
