I designed Hola as part of Open Hack V2.0, a hackathon conducted by Unacademy for engineers. Apparently, it was not meant for designers but I still took up the challenge. The challenge was to build a digital product that can help people discover and host social experiences(house events) to connect new people.
The hackathon did not have group participation, so I was the sole product designer working on it.
Due to time constraint, I did not have enough time to conduct user interviews. I tried to find an answer to “Why does the product need to be created?”. The core features that the product would have are
- Exploring events in the neighbourhood
- Making new friends with similar interests
- Hosting an event yourself
Mostly the problem is difficulty in finding all the new house events happening in the neighbourhood. The product will help in exploring all these events and attend the ones you are interested in.
I started out by defining the user flow for accomplishing different tasks within the app.
Before diving into sketching out different options, I tried to explore other apps with similar services, like Airbnb Experiences, Meetup and Eventbrite to understand how they did things. I made some crucial decisions during the sketching phase.
A walkthrough was essential to inform the users what all they can do on the app. I rejected option 2 because it presented the users with information to consume and fill at the same time which could get overwhelming. I chose to go ahead with option 3 over option 1 because it allowed the users to take the required action on the same screen rather than just providing the walkthrough and then trying to skip it.
I decided to incorporate password-free signup/login using the phone number or Google/Facebook account. This would result in a hassle-free and smooth login experience.
The major tasks in the app are to explore nearby events and attend or create an event. So I decided to go with bottom navigation including the two major tasks. I chose to place the filter besides the search rather than having a separate floating action button, the reason being that search and filter provide similar functionality.
For the event details, I decided to go with option 2 because it allows the user to take action at any time while checking out the event because of the fixed bottom price and call to action. Also, the date and time details are important parameters for making a decision about attending an event and are better represented in option 2.
I went ahead to convert the low-fidelity sketches into high fidelity screens using Figma.
I tested the low fidelity prototype with 3 users. The users had to perform 3 tasks-
Users were able to perform all tasks but had trouble in identifying the current appointment card as a clickable element with options to edit and cancel the appointment. So I decided to include a visual cue to improve discoverability of appointment options.
I went ahead to make the final screens choosing blue as the primary colour since blue is heavily associated with calmness.
I had prepared a Typeform for conducting a survey of doctors in NITR dispensary, but unfortunately, they did not cooperate. So I decided to move forward with my own observations and assumptions.
I started defining the list of features to bridge the link between patient’s app and doctor.
I started sketching out different ideas roughly to get a quick idea about how the app was going to be shaped. The initial idea was based around a dashboard layout but since doctors only have one primary action in the app so I decided to focus only on the appointment process and went ahead with option 3.
After that, I started making the low fidelity screens in the direction of the finalised concept.
Using the similar visual language of patients’ app I went ahead to make the final screens of the doctors’ app.
MyDukan app was launched in July 2019 on Google Play Store. Since then, the app has over 100,000+ downloads on Play Store with an average rating of 4.6/5. Users had very positive reviews about the app and were demanding additional features for their business management.
I am not completely satisfied with the event cards. The hierarchy of information and typography could have been improved by iterating further. But I was limited by time constraints.
Icons could have been used for the offerings section in the event details screen to allow easier scanning of information.
