UX Case Study
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UX Case Study 〰️
LitCheck
Work
Responsible for conducting research for the LitCheck app.
Role
UX Designer/UX Research
Duration
February 2019 -
August 2022
Team
Agile
Purpose
LitCheck is a nightlife app that was created to ensure users have a great night out at bars and venues in their city. The LitCheck app allows you to discover new bars in your area, rate the litness of bars, and order drinks from the app when the line at the bar is tool long. It can be used wether you're looking for a night filled with people or are looking to avoid crowds.
Onboarding
I started working at LitCheck as a graphic designer creating digital and printable content for adds and marketing, and later transitioned into UX. I began doing ux research and later started designing for the purpose of user experience. Onboarding as a ux designer entailed a lot of on-the-fly learning and applying the skills and knowledge I had already learned form General Assembly’s UX Certification course to the product. I also learned how to work with developers and communicated my ideas.
Challenges
Many people experience hesitation and uncertainty when searching for the perfect place to go for a night out. Once people go out they also encounter bottlenecks at venues such as long lines for beverages, overcrowded venues, or an under-crowded venue lacking energy.
"I hate having to sit in long lines," - Ben Meyers
"Not looking to go to overcrowded venues," Lisa Burnstien
Goal
LitCheck aims to provide a solution for users looking for the right type of venue that meets their goals for a night out.
Target Users
Our target users were in the age rage of 21-35 but mostly consisted of college students, recent college graduates, and adults in their mid to late 20's.
Below are some examples of the user personas I created based on user interviews I conducted.
User Personas
1. Many users Ideal Experience consisted of a ritual for a night out that seems to permeate its way into each persona. It starts with a pregame involving friends to start the night off. There is a general idea of the area or destination but the decision will likely be discussed during the pregame. After an hour or so they go out to the destinations they decided upon. Following a night out is either an opportunity to get food, go to a postgame, or go to an afterparty with the friends they went out with or new ones that they met.
2. User Goals revealed interesting information. The venue and venue amenities were important to the user but it seemed as though the people the users spent their time with for a night out were equally as important if not more important than the makeup of the venue. We saw consistently that the preservation of the friend group and the ability for everyone to be involved in the conversation/activity was mentioned frequently.
3. Users Pain Points were long lines, group conflict or indecision, overcrowded venues, and ordering drinks at peak hours.
Research
When conducting ux research we definined our assumptions and organized the questions we would ask potential users in our user interviews. This would allow us to gain incites on our users, develop personas and validate assumptions and questions about the features of the app that we would be including. This would effectively validate, change, or remove the features we plan on including in the app based on the data we collect. We organized these questions and assumptions in the form of an Affinity Map. We sorted the questions and assumptions into four categories that served served as the basis for different features of the app: decision making, rewards and decision making, litness and decision making, target users.
We used the assumptions and questions we developed through the affinity map to conduct User Interviews and create User Personas. This data helped gain incite on our users plan thought process when it comes to how they approach a night out. We conducted over 40 user interviews on this product.
Below are questions we asked users in our first user interview:
1. Who do you follow on social media?
2. What kind of music do you listen to?
3. What brands do you follow on social media?
4. What does the phrase: "perfect night out" mean to you?
5. What steps would you take to achieve the perfect night out? 6. How do you decide where you are going out in a night?
7. How often would you say your able to realize your version of a perfect night out? (success rate?)
8. Which days of the week do you go out?
9. What times of the day do you go out?
10. How do you feel about the process of ordering a drink at a bar?
11. What if any are your expectations for a night out with friends or a S.O.?
12. How often do you go out now with Covid?
13. How often did you go out as a student/professional? (average per week)
14. How early in the day might you decide to go out at night?
15. When might you use LitCheck? (have you used it before?)
16. Why would you use LitCheck?
17. How do you feel about going during Covid?
19. Do you enjoy drinking?
Next we conducted a Competitive Analysis to determine what features we had in common with similar apps and to see how we could create a competitive edge on the market based on the features we plan to implement.
These were current competitors: WhrzAt, Zomato, Barroulette, Yelp, Bump LLC,Google Maps, Nocto, Discotech Nightlife, Open Table, Four Square,Design My Night, Untapped, Beer Buddy.
Green: Feature is somewhat complete or will be complete in the future
Red: Feature is complete and in the app
Yellow: Feature is not in the app
After inputing the data into a Competitive Matrix for a visual representation, we noticed that we share the most similarities with Open Table out of our competitors. They matched our criteria of features in the categories of discovery, real time data, and rewards, and had more social features on their app than ours. Apart from similarities in the number of features, their users use Open Table for securing reservations at restaurants of their choosing. It's important to note that these successful features account for user retention in Open Table. This indicates that the features we share with Open Table and offer to our users in the context of our app may also bolster our user retention. It is imperative that we explore the importance of social capabilities within the app when conducting user interviews in the future. As historical data has shown, even if lesser known competitors of this app share the same social features, those social features are a large reason for user retention in lesser known competitors.
Design System
While we were conducting research and validating assumptions about the features we wanted to implement and create a design system so we would have a sense of our brand guidelines when designing, creating wireframes and new features.
Information Architecture
Moving forward we used information architecture to organize the flow of information. This process helped us focus on all of the features we wanted to implement based on the data we collected from our first round of user interviews. Establishing information architecture helped us prioritize which features of the app we would test first. Below are a few examples of information architecture exercises we
The first feature we decided to test was the onboarding and sign-up process. We decided to execute an AB Test and a User Interview in order to not only test but gather feedback by diving deeper into “why” from the users perspective. After collecting feedback from users on the signup and onboarding process we solved the pain points brought up by users. We got to work on fixing the pain points users had and designed a high fidelity prototype of the app so we could run through more scenarios with users in oder to test the capabilities of the app.
Key Findings
1. Users typically skip the tutorial pages that familiarize the user with the features of the app. A way to make it more engaging is to make sure the images exemplifying exactly what the text is saying on the tutorial page and make the icons flashier or more interactive.
2. The "remember me" login option needs to be active for users. Users strongly dislike having to log into the app every time they open it again. Having an option where a user stays signed in saves users time and effort.
3. Definitions were also unclear. There were many questions regarding the definitions to some of the words listed on the preferences page, including definitions for venue categories, but especially when it came to rating the litness for capacity. Some of the words used to describe capacity carry negative connotation which we want to avoid, where some were very unclear as to what they meant at all. These descriptior words must be changed.
4. The order of the tutorial screens should bre reorganized as well. What is litness (Page 2) should be come first, followed by page 1, page 3, and page 4.
Feature Prioritization
1. Reorganize the order of tutorial pages.
2. Replace images on tutorial pages
3. Activate "remember me" function
4. Replace words that have negative connotation
Low Fidelity & High Fidelity Mockups
Testing The Final Prototype
Using a combination of Usability Tests and User Interviews we began testing the main functions of the app. We broke down scenarios and objectives for users to walk through and made notes on successes and pain points that were revealed through the process of testing. Below is an example of the questions we asked participants during these interviews.
Scenario 4. It’s a Saturday night and your friends came over for a pregame. The night is going great so far and you are looking to move the party somewhere else. You remember you have the LitCheck app and decide to use it to help you pick the next place to go. How would you do that?
Scenario 5. You are at a nightclub and the music is popping and the club is packed. You check your phone and see you got a reminder that you can rate the litness of venue to get free rewards. You open the app, how would you think to rate the litness? How would you think you could rate the litness?
Is it easy to rate the litness?
Wrap-up Questions
Which prototype did you prefer using and why?
What are your top 3 favorite places to go for a night out?
Do you already know where to go when deciding where to go out?
How do you know where to go? Are you deciding where to go blind?
Do you know of anyone else who would be interested in participating in one of our surveys?
Would you rate the litness?
Would you order a drink through the app?
Select This Image To View High Fidelity Prototype
Goals:
Understand which homepage layouts users prefer.
Examine how users navigate through the existing design and note any pain points. Determine how users interact with the ordering system.
How do users feel about rating the litness?
Capture any areas within the UI that the user does not understand or dislikes.
Discover any gaps or misunderstandings in the user experience
Scenario 1. You want to watch a ufc fight at a bar with your buddies but you don't know which venues is closest and/or the capacity of the venue. How would you figure that out? Where would you think to go in the app to find the venues closest to you?
Where would you think to look in the app for information on how many people might be at the venue in that moment?
Scenario 2. You are at your favorite venue and the line to order a drink is really long. You don't want to wait in line to order a drink but there is also no server to take your drink order. How would you use the LitCheck app to order a drink?
Scenario 3. Let's say it's your best friend’s birthday and they want to go to a game-bar in Midtown Atlanta with reasonably priced drinks. How would you find game-bars in Midtown with our app?
Mockups
Takeaways
Establishing information architecture, user personas, and conducting early user interviews allowed us to organize which features were relevant and most important. This saved the team an immense amount of time and avoided building features that wouldn’t serve our users. We were able to implement the data we had collected from user interviews and product testing and increase user traction and engagement by over 300%. Moving forward with the project our founder ran into a string of health issues and was unable to continue with the project. That being said, where we left the product, our next steps would be to continue testing other features and focus on marketing and advertising the product to reach a larger user base.