Redefining House Parties through a Social Networking Service called VYBE
Vybe is a party planning app that provides an integrated event planning experience, allowing hosts to plan and attendees to seamlessly participate, ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Our Goal
To revolutionize house party planning and provide a holistic experience by empowering people to organize and attend house parties that embrace diversity and inclusivity through the power of shared experiences and celebrating various cultures.
Constraints
A short timeline of only 10 weeks to create an innovative social network offer that is feasible, fills a unique user-stakeholder need, and addresses a market opportunity that so far remains unexplored/ unsaturated by real and potential competitors.
Our Outcome
Through our Vybe app, users interact by hosting or attending parties, receiving personalized recommendations, using Vybe’s collaborative party tools, and participating in community building features.
What was the challenge?
Despite the enjoyment people find in house parties, genuine connections are impacted by the inconvenience caused by unexpected guests and the logistical nightmares associated with hosting them.
- Market Research
- Identify Users & Target Audience
- Primary Research
- Insight Translation
- Analyzing Competitor Landscape
- Prototyping using a Business Model
- Usability Testing
- Wireframes & Final Product
- Revenue Model
What?
Vybe is a party planning app that provides an integrated event planning experience, allowing hosts to plan and attendees to seamlessly participate, ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Why?
To empower people to organize and attend house parties that embrace diversity and inclusivity through the power of shared experiences and celebrating various cultures.
How?
Users interact by hosting or attending parties, receiving personalized recommendations, using Vybe’s collaborative party tools, and participating in community building features.
How did we get here?
We carried out in-depth market research, utilizing diverse methodologies such as Porter's 5 Forces and PESTEL analysis for a thorough examination of our competitors' ambitions, challenges, and range of products and services. This was further enriched by applying the Blue Ocean Strategy and a 2x2 Matrix, enabling us to pinpoint potential areas of opportunity for our initiative.
User Insights
After synthesizing our data points, we had four user insights that were crucial for the further design process.
- At house parties, there's a desire for genuine connections, but a fear of inauthentic networking exists.
- A vision for gatherings that celebrate cultural exchange in a visually appealing setting.
- Introverts feel overwhelmed by unexpected guests, leading to anxiety which they manage by drinking.
- The logistical challenges and aftermath of hosting deter people from organizing gatherings.
We further deepened our understanding of developing design criteria from insights using the ZAG 17-step method. ZAG is a methodology developed by Marty Neumeier, focusing on the creation of brand strategy and identity. Here is a link to the 17 steps for the Vybe project.
Crafting Strategic Direction with the North Stars Method
We conducted the North Stars method, a strategic approach developed by Gabriella Lanning and her colleague at Google, designed to incorporate design thinking into the early stages of strategic planning. This method, focusing on adding value for both users and the business, emphasizes clarity, addressing user pain points, being compelling, measurable, achievable, and remaining open-ended regarding solutions. By drawing on our user insights, we established our North Stars, which then informed and guided our ideation and development efforts, encapsulating key aspects: 'Who', 'What', 'Wow', and 'Why'.
Core Drivers and Enablers
Our foundational value pillars—Personalization, Community, and Diversity—form the backbone of the Social Networking Service (SNS) concept. These pillars drive our commitment to creating impactful and user-centric experiences through our app, Vybe.
Value Proposition Canvas
The Value Proposition Canvas consists of a Value Map on the left and a Customer Profile on the right.
- Value Map: This section includes all ideation based on the value pillars, categorized into gain creators, pain relievers, and products and services.
- Customer Profile: Here, we've mapped all our insights and data points to understand the customer's pains, gains, and jobs to be done.
We conducted a fit analysis to determine how well we address the identified pains, gains, and customer jobs, ensuring that our offerings align with customer needs and expectations. Detailed Ideation is given here for reference.
After understanding Vybe's value proposition and constructing a business model grounded in those values, we developed user flows to better comprehend the user journey throughout the app. Based on these flows, we created wireframes, establishing a visual blueprint for our application. and then finalizing our UI with Pricing guidlines from usability testing.
Creative integration
We applied methods that can be reliably integrated into a business.
Transforming ideas
We utilized conceptual models to transform ideas into tangible prototypes.
Product strategy:
We developed comprehensive product plans within business strategies, covering production, marketing, distribution, and intellectual property.
Financial forecasts:
Created forecasts and documents for communicating concepts to investors.
Innovation Presentation:
We learned how to showcase innovation's importance for successful organizations.