Initial Research
Before start working on anything, it is necessary to understand the feature in and out. It helps to empathize with users and deciding the scope of the product.
The initial process starts with talking to people, how they communicate with other team members on Flock and why there is a need for mailing lists.
Understanding Flock Communication
In Flock, people communicate with others through two ways, either one on one chat or in a channel. Channels on Flock is where the real magic happens! Team members use channels for departments, small teams, and projects to keep everyone in the loop.
Understanding Mailing list
A mailing list is a list of emails and names of individuals to send emails to many recipients.
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In organizations; people use mailing list in different departments for different purposes. This includes HR, IT, Admins for the announcement. Teams use for project discussions. Sales and marketing for sending emails to target users.
Need of mailing lists
From past many decades, people use emails as a primary source of official communication, but in past few years, the trend has changed. Now people communicate more on chat platforms like Slack, Hangout chats, Flock, etc.
Still, emails have advantages over chat, and people prefer emails for essential communication. Due to the nature of chats and limitations, mailing lists are still popular and important part of any organization.
Work | Whatsapp Events
Whatsapp Events
Making plans in a group chat
Concept to create any event inside Whatsapp and send the invitation to your contacts. Seamless experience to plan an event with friends. Make your plans successful.
User Need
We use instant messaging (like WhatsApp) for all our communication needs today. We keep in touch with friends and make most of the plans on these platforms.
Most plans fail because people do not respond or lost the information. Social dynamics play a great role in success or failure of an event. For instance, it is motivating to see how many people are going and taking interest. The existing solutions for group chats do not address these needs. Simply put, planning events today is a nightmare. Event planning is a light-weight, simple to use the feature within a group chat. It allows group members to collaboratively plan events with other group members.
Activities & Attributes:
Scenario:
Initial Research
I started my research by doing some secondary research. There are existing methods to create events on different platforms like Facebook & Google Calendar.
Google Calendar:
Google calendar events used for official or professional & personal purpose. One can create any event and invite others through mails and others can accept, reject or respond on that event.
Facebook Events:
In facebook we can create any event and invite friends from our friend list. These event are more social events like Startup meets, Summits, Product launches, Music events etc. These events has different visibility settings so user can create public events or private events. Users can accept, reject, respond or share event with other friends also. This has much wider scope of interaction and collaboration than google events. Users can post something inside the event, like, comment or share any post.
After doing some initial research I started talking to different people to get idea of how they plan events on groups. after conducting some user interviews I got some data points to start working on this.
Initial User Study
User Insights
After initial research, I got some idea about the events people plan and communicate with others. Few points from initial user research are mention below.
• People make plans for professional and casual events, through messengers or calendar events.
• People plan for events like movie, short trip, dinner, get to gather, work meeting, party etc.
• People communicate with quick messengers like WhatsApp, FB messenger, Hike, Telegram etc.
• They usually create small groups where they chat together.
• Even in groups its difficult to collaborate on any one thing, most of the time they end up cancelling the event.
• They don’t create any events for friends on google calendar because it requires email id of friends and difficult to collaborate on mail.
• They use google calendar events for more professional events like official meetings etc.
• It's difficult to remind event date and time.
• When they have small groups then they come up with a more fruitful event.
• When they discuss the event in large groups, they end up canceling the whole plan, or people agree on the first talk and forget about event.
• Sometimes they don’t have specific group to any event, so they have to create a group for that.
• Most of the time users make their decision on based on others participating in an event.
• Sometimes they change their mind after convincing hard by others.
Event Success Metrics
• It seems small groups with serious events has the highest rate of success.
• A large group with serious events & small group with less serious events has a medium success rate.
• A large group with less serious events has the lowest rate of success.
User Persona & Scenario
Name: Deepak Singh
Age: 34 Yrs
Gender: Male
Occupation: University Lecturer
Status: Married
Location: Delhi, India.
Activities & Attributes:
• He is very efficient in advance technology.
• Active in socializing.
• Connected with old friends through Facebook and Whatsapp.
• Always initiate get to gathers and parties in friend groups.
• Fluently use mobile applications, laptop and I pad.
Scenario:
Deepak passed out from college 8 years back but still in touch with most of his batchmates. He is in touch with all of his friends through Facebook and WhatsApp. A few days back he met with few of his friends and decided to organize alumni meet. He already has a group of all batchmates in WhatsApp, where he communicates with others.
He is looking to create an event at a place where everyone is available. He wants to make this event successful by convincing most of the friends for the event. For this, he needs the exact number of participants who are coming so he can arrange the place food and do all the booking.
Information Architecture
Final Screens
New Event & All Events will be there in three dot menu on home screen.
New Event: If user doesn’t have any group and want to create an event, he can create an event and then invite his friends.
All Events: All events will be here at one place. This is one place for all events where user will find all events.
If user creates any event outside any group, it will show with this event icon.
In each group, + button will be there along with camera icon. On clicking on this, user can create an event inside any group.
This screen is New event screen. Here user can enter the event name, small description, event date, event time and location.
Event Description and Event Location are optional fields.
Clicking on Date or Time, android default date & time picker will open, its good enough to pick event date & time.
After entering Event Date and Event Time, if user want to put End Date & END Time he can also add, these fields are also optional.
If user is not creating event inside any group, he can add group participants for that event.
After creating event inside any group it will show like this. It will reflect Event name, event description, event date & time, how many friends accepted that event, how many rejected event and how many comments are on this particular event.
This is view from other side of the group, how it will reflect to others.
Information will be same in chat bubble.
If user click on that event he will redirect to the event conversation screen, here on top he can see the event details, if location is attached to that event it will reflect location link also, if user click on location it will redirect user to google maps.
Here on bottom there will be two response button, so user can respond to that event if he wants to attend that event or not.
Whoever user or their group members will respond to this event it will reflect here, who is accepting the event or rejecting the event and actually comment and collaborate with each others.
Once user start scrolling event details will be collapsed.
If user click on event details from group it will take user to event details page, here user can see all responds who accepted, who rejected and who are still not responded to the event.
If user want to edit the event he can edit even from edit icon on top right corner. Only event admin can edit event details or cancel event.
For non group event, If user click on event details it will take user to event details page, here user can see all responds who accepted, who rejected and who are still not responded to the event.
If user want to edit the event he can edit even from edit icon on top right corner. Only event admin can edit event details or cancel event.
If user or any other member wants to add participants they can add from here.
If user click on All events from three dot menu from home page, it will open all event page, all events will be shown here, user can search all events.
If user click on any event it will take user to event conversation page.
If event is inside any group, it will drop the anchor on event, user can click and go further.
After expiry of event no one will be able to edit or collaborate in event, but they can still see the conversation and responses.
If user don’t put any end time by default it will expire in 1 hour after starting the event.
Same happens when event admin cancel event, After cancellation of event no one will be able to edit or collaborate in event, but they can still see the conversation and responses.
User Flow
