Meet.me

Building Lasting Connections Through Meaningful Activities and Global Engagement

Meet.me is a powerful connection app crafted to help individuals build and sustain meaningful relationships in the digital age. It addresses a wide range of social needs, whether connecting with new acquaintances worldwide or staying in touch with distant friends and family. Its intuitive interface enhances communication and strengthens bonds.

A standout feature of Meet.me is its ability to enable users to join and create activities that match their interests, such as virtual meetups and hobby groups, fostering genuine interactions and connections. Users can explore a variety of activities, ensuring inclusivity for all.

Meet.me employs advanced algorithms to match users with like-minded individuals, significantly increasing the likelihood of forming meaningful relationships. This personalized approach enriches the experience by encouraging authentic conversations. Whether expanding your social circle or collaborating on projects, Meet.me is an indispensable social tool.

Beyond facilitating new connections, Meet.me excels in nurturing existing relationships with features for scheduling catch-ups, sharing updates, and planning events, ensuring strong friendships and family ties. It makes building and maintaining relationships both accessible and enjoyable.

Deliverables

Experience design, User research, UX design methodologies

Software

Figma, Miro

Timeframe

Dec 2020

Users + Audience

Meet.me is tailored for individuals like Ala, a 30-year-old product designer. Ala is an outgoing, socially conscious, and educated woman in a committed relationship. She values meaningful connections, seeking opportunities to meet new people while also deepening her relationships with family and loved ones.

Scope + Constraints

In this project, our team worked remotely due to the ongoing COVID-19 circumstances, collaborating virtually with both team members and users. The project was completed as a two-day sprint, with the primary goal of developing and testing one user flow.

As part of the team, I contributed by conducting user research through interviews, brainstorming sessions, and the creation of a user persona. I also leveraged my skills in storyboarding and wireframing to shape the design process.

User interview synthesis + Takeaways

Our user interviews revealed several key insights:

New vs. Existing Relationships: Users expressed differing priorities between meeting new people and strengthening existing relationships
Activity Timing: Preferences emerged for daytime versus evening activities, with specific times suiting certain types of activities (e.g., noted in Interview 3)
Activity Types: Users showed interest in both active, exciting activities and more relaxed options like dining out or watching movies
Curation and Logistics: Planning and organizing activities were cited as barriers to socializing
Safety Concerns: Two aspects of safety arose—building trust with new connections formed virtually and addressing health-related safety concerns

The interviews highlighted a strong desire to stay socially engaged. For example, Interviewees 2 and 3 focused on their existing social circles, while Interviewee 1, although married, emphasized meeting new people.

These insights guided us in refining the product concept to address the true need for meaningful connections and safe socializing during challenging times.

To synthesize our findings, we categorized key topics and points discussed in each interview. Using color coding to differentiate each interview, we identified clear patterns: most interviewees faced similar challenges when attempting to connect with others. These commonalities provided valuable direction for addressing user needs and overcoming barriers to social interaction.

User persona

Using the insights gathered from our three user interviews, my team and I created a comprehensive user persona. This persona encapsulates the key characteristics and needs identified during the research, serving as a representative model to guide the design process and ensure a user-focused approach.

Ala is a 30-year-old product designer in a committed relationship. She is outgoing, extroverted, and socially conscious, with a strong desire to socialize, meet new people, and maintain connections with her existing relationships. Ala is seeking a solution that addresses her health, physical, and emotional safety concerns while alleviating the loneliness she has experienced from social isolation.

How might we

With Ala’s persona as our focal point, we began brainstorming questions to better understand and address her primary goals for fostering connections. These questions aimed to explore innovative solutions for socializing during challenging times:

How might we create safe, COVID-compliant socializing that leverages special interest activities to foster genuine, lasting connections?
How might we make planning online social interactions less stressful?
How might we gamify COVID socializing to make it more engaging?
How might we shift COVID socializing to be activity- or interest-driven, rather than solely people-driven?
How might we tie socializing during COVID to solving social issues, such as understanding diverse perspectives or supporting causes?
How might we make socializing during COVID better than pre-COVID by offering unique and positive experiences?
How might we assist in planning in-person socializing that adheres to safety protocols while remaining engaging?
How might we assist in planning online socializing that fosters genuine connections?

Throughout this process, we maintained a user-centric perspective, seeing the challenges through Ala’s eyes and distilling our findings to address her specific needs and obstacles.

In the end, we solidified our question to be:

How might we assist in planning social interactions that comply with safety protocols, are engaging (activity oriented and shared experience focused) and cultivate a genuine connection?

Hypothesis

By distilling Ala’s pain points as someone seeking meaningful connections, we developed the following hypothesis for our product:

We believe that creating a social platform with features enabling connections with other users, invitations to non-users, and dynamic activity browsing based on interests and COVID safety preferences will help combat loneliness and boredom.

We will validate this hypothesis through survey responses indicating satisfying social interactions, rates of repeat use, increased interactions with new people, and external invites extending to existing relationships outside the platform.

User flow

With a solid understanding of user needs, we moved on to building user flows for our product. A core feature of the platform is the ability for users to create their own activities for others to join or to participate in activities posted by others.

We began by focusing on the initial interaction—how a user would engage with the product to create an activity. For this user flow, we chose to proceed with a scenario involving a returning user. This allowed us to streamline the process and ensure a seamless experience for ongoing engagement.

User testing

Using the wireframes, we created a prototype for user testing and tasked participants with figuring out how to create a new activity.

The feedback was very positive, with most users finding the process easy to navigate and successfully completing the task without issues. Some feedback pointed out that the activity page felt too crowded, but participants loved the idea of having the option to either join an existing activity or create their own. This feedback helped identify areas for improvement in terms of layout and clarity.

Outcomes

This project provided several valuable insights and takeaways:

Value Diverse Perspectives: Embracing differing opinions is crucial when tackling a project. It's important to give all parties a chance to voice their views and come to a consensus only after hearing all perspectives.
Avoid Assumptions About Users: It's essential not to make assumptions about what users want. Initially, we assumed the product would revolve around dating, based on the project brief. However, user interviews revealed that most participants were interested in building connections of all types, not just romantic ones.

These lessons reinforced the importance of collaboration, user empathy, and staying open-minded throughout the design process.

Deliv

Illustrations + Logos