Flock

DURATION

February 24 - 26, 2023
3 days

TOOLS

Figma

TEAM

Francine Go
Kaila Long
Gayathri Yedavilli

CONTEXT

Living in a world with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, it is difficult to foster community amongst individuals. Many people struggle to find or connect with communities and oftentimes wish it was easier to create genuine connections with the people around them.

How can we amplify and empower cultures of community and inclusivity in our neighborhoods, schools, and beyond?

USER RESEARCH

With under 72 hours to create a fully functional prototype, my team knew we needed to collect user input in order to solve a common problem. Utilizing user surveys as our main research methodology, we asked various people about their thoughts on belonging in a community.

Respondents reported a sense of belonging occurred when they joined an organization or group of people with a common background/interests.

“Being surrounded by people who had similar experiences growing up was very comforting...”

“I feel I belong to the ICS lab community because there are so many like-minded people..."

"...I made great friends through meeting other people who grew up similar to me..."

However, many individuals detailed how reaching out is the hardest part of joining new communities.

“Scared to genuinely open up, easier to engage in shallow conversations”

“i have trouble coming out of my shell and talking to other people.”

"Not being the one to reach out first, it becomes much easier with a middleground"

We wanted to create an application that would ease users into new communities whilst maintaining the sense of belonging found in already established communities. Utilizing out findings, we began to brainstorm ways to address the problems our respondents shared.

CREATING FIRST PROTOTYPE

Focusing on embracing culture, Turtle was created as a community-based app where users could connect through exploring different cultures. Through implementing community culture pages, we encouraged the exchange of culture, allowing users to explore communities and gain a sense of belonging while learning about a new culture.

Phone mock-up of first prototype iteration: Turtle

The features we implemented through Turtle included "shells" or community groups where users could post journal entries to share their cultural experiences or questions for others to interact with. With a focus of exploring community—through food, art, and events—Turtle would allow users to "come out of their shell" and explore different culture communities, with the help of those within their community

However, as we continued to ideate features for Turtle, we soon realized our prototype was focusing more on users discovering cultures themselves, rather than promoting inclusivity through interacting with users. Although bridging cultures was one of our main goals with this app, we felt as if we were forgetting the initial goal in helping to bridge people together.

Diagram displaying why Flock's design did not focus on inclusivity through connection

We created pages for users to post more about their cultural journeys, which led us to stray away from our initial idea of community. As the prototype started to feel more like a blogging platform, rather than a space to genuinely connect with others, we started to question whether Turtle was the right prototype for our initial prompt.

BRAINSTORMING

With spending the first night of our allotted time creating our first prototype, we were hesitant to scrap our initial plans in the middle of our design process. However, we knew recentering our prototype around the prompt would allow us to focus more on users connecting and meeting in the real world.

IDEAS TO EMPHASIZE

- Allow users to meet one another and form lasting connections
- Create communities with common interests
- Foster in-person connections

One feature we developed in Turtle stood out to us as a way to foster connection between users: going to cultural events together. Reenforcing this idea, we ideated a new application with the main functionality of bringing people together to attend social gatherings, which we named Flock.

RESTRUCTURING

Creating groups of people (flocks) to attend in-person events together gives users more opportunities to interact with one another and form a community. Instead of only being able to utilize in-app messaging as a means to interact with others, users are able to form their own communities for events of their own interest, providing a more diverse space for connection.

first iteration

TURTLE

second iteration

FLOCK

✓ promotes inclusivity
✓ easily find community
X easily create community
X encourages interaction
X strengthens real-world relationships

✓ promotes inclusivity
✓ easily find community
✓ easily create community
✓ encourages interaction
✓ strengthens real-world relationships

BRAND IDENTITY

We wanted Flock to be a very welcoming app that encouraged users to be engaged with the possible social gatherings to attend with others. Utilizing rounded corners and sans serif fonts allowed the app to feel more fun and friendly; with the name "Flock" being reminiscent of birds in the sky, we designed the user interface to have a blue color and a logo shaped as a bird.

REFLECTION

With Design-a-thon only lasting for 72 hours, I learned to budget my time and strengthen my decision-making skills. Our team needed to make quick decisions and agreements to make progress, resulting in us becoming more adaptable with our ideas in a timely manner. I also learned the value of taking steps back, and viewing our work from a different viewpoint, to ensure our prototype addresses our initial prompts.

Image to display a user persona icon because one of my key-takeaways from this project was that we should have made a user-persona to ensure our app was solving problems real-life users could have.

As this was my first time creating a full prototype, I learned a lot from my teammates: from making sure each user-action is accounted for, to perfecting individual task flows.

If we were able to do one thing differently, I believe creating a user persona would have been helpful to ensure our prototype tackles various problems users may face. If given more time, usability testing would have been useful to ensure our app is easy to use and does not have any pitfalls in functionality.

Overall, our prototype scored higher than 44 out of 61 teams, which was a pleasant surprise since our team’s personal goal was to learn and gain experience, without worrying about our rank. Considering this was everyone’s first Design-a-thon, I am proud of our results and grateful for the opportunity to work and grow with a strong team.