Instant Messaging
An all-new communication experience for hosts and guests on Evite
OVERVIEW
There are a lot of planning and coordination necessary to organize an event. Coordinating with a big group of guests can get overwhelming quickly. We explored ways to ease communication between hosts and guests. Ultimately, the new feature had a 40% adoption rate across platforms.
MY ROLE
I conducted user research and presented user findings. We then ran Design Sprint to generate ideas. I developed the final UIs and specs. After feature was launched, I monitored user engagement closely.
Problem
When there was a lot of planning and coordination between hosts and guests, coordination could become difficult to keep track of. How might we organize communications to effortlessly connect hosts and guests?
Discovery — Journey mapping
Based on Evite’s primary persona, I created a user journey wheel to illustrate the user’s end-to-end event planning experience. This led to surfacing moments of stress the user felt when coordinating with guests. This mapping helped align stakeholders to the user problem.
INSIGHT
A big part of the stress throughout event planning came from communicating between hosts and guests. Coordination and discussions were spread across different mediums (text messages, emails, phone calls, and in-person). It became overwhelming for hosts to keep track of conversations. There was no one place to organize and keep track of event planning for hosts and guests.
Rapid Research using Design Sprint
We used a 5-day Design Sprint to generate many design ideas in an attempt to solve a problem that was so broad that it involved the entire event planning journey. The cross-functional team included engineers, copywriters, marketing strategist, product manager, and myself.
Day 1 — Map
We created project goals and challenges. We talked to experts while taking notes of opportunities. We then looked for patterns in the notes and voted on key opportunities to tackle.
Day 2 — Sketch
We conducted light comparative analysis to get inspirations. We did ‘Crazy 8s’ where everyone sketched 8 ideas in 8 minutes to generate many design ideas. Then everyone sketched their own detailed solution in a storyboard format.
Day 3 — Decide
We silently voted on parts of the sketches that we liked. After discussing and capturing main ideas from each sketch, we voted on the ideas to prototype on.
Day 4 — Prototype
We created a storyboard to plan for a prototype. We then developed the prototype and created an interview script for user testing.
Day 5 — Test
We tested the prototype with real users and took notes on user feedback. Identifying feedback patterns, we discussed next steps for the project.
Defining MVP scope
Once we validated the direction of our solutions, I worked with the product manager to define what MVP looks like so we could launch faster and get user feedback quicker.
Specifying MVP feature details
I then worked on defining the details of the MVP features. To accommodate different communication needs, we developed different types of messages — direct messages, group messages, and broadcast messages.
Iteration & testing
I developed high-fidelity prototype, conducted usability testing to validate design, and iterated on the design.
Final mockups & specs
I created final UIs and specs for iOS, Android, and web. When a build was ready, I conducted design QA and logged design bug tickets to sprints.
Usability testing
Throughout the project, we conducted usability testing at different stages of the project to validate the design. We also ran company-wide testing to stress-test the feature and make sure the feature would work well with scale.
Goal — an organized communication hub for hosts and guests
Evite already has the party guest list and contact informations of all guests. Consolidating communications in Evite allowed hosts to communicate with guests more efficiently.
Efficient communications — Broadcast messages
We learned that the ability to message guests by their RSVPs was a valuable feature for hosts. Hosts could quickly let attending guests know about event updates and reminders. With broadcast messages, hosts could send the same message to multiple guests all at once, saving valuable time for the hosts.
Party coordination — In-chat party planning tools
Often time hosts need direct responses from their guests for food preparations, activities to do during the party, etc. These responses could quickly get disorganized in chats. With in-chat party planning tools such as poll, hosts could organize all responses in a poll format.
Building trust — transparency and privacy
We implemented timely product education for guests to know when a message was broadcasted to them. To protect user privacy, guests who received a message from another guest could accept or decline the message at the start of the conversation. These are important interactions to build trust.
Impact and outcome
The feature had a high adoption rate. Over 35% of events used the messaging feature across platforms. Site traffic increased by over 25% YOY.
Since launch, we developed more event-centric features within messages. These features were patent pending.
What I learned
Creating win-win solutions for the business and users
This project was a win-win for the business and users since it solved a pain point for users in easing their communications, and at the same time it increased user engagement and time spent on the website and apps. It would also create new business opportunities as more party-centered features were added in chat.
Bring your stakeholders along the design process
Since stakeholders were members of the design sprint, they were involved in the design process and helped made decisions from the start. Stakeholders were so involved in the design process, as a designer you no longer need to persuade them and get project buy-ins.
Design sprint was a great way to collaborate
Design sprint allowed all voices in the room to be heard so that no voice was left behind. Dot-voting created a democratic system to make decisions effectively. Since everyone was so focused and engaged, we were able to test and validate our ideas in just 5 days!